BX  8333  .  Li8  H3  1923 

Luccock,  Halford  Edward, 
1885-1960 . 

The  haunted  house,  and  other 


s  *=>  ■rmon  s 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/hauntedhouseotheOOIucc 


* 


■ 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


FARES,  PLEASE! 

STUDIES  IN  THE  PARABLES  OF  JESUS 
CHRISTIAN  CRUSADE  FOR  WORLD  DEMOCRACY 
NEW  MAP  OF  THE  WORLD 
THE  MIDWEEK  SERVICE  (With  Warren  F.  Cook) 

SKYLINES 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 

AND  OTHER  SERMONS 


By 

HALFORD  E.  LUCCOCK 


twasm'm'rm 

yfln 

ggg! 

rarT 

THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1923,  by 
HALFORD  E.  LUCCOCK 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO  MARY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  The  Haunted  House .  9 

II.  The  Long  and  Short  of  It .  30 

III.  The  Intelligence  Office .  44 

IV.  Love  Laughs  at  Locksmiths .  56 

V.  In  an  Age  of  Substitutes .  77 

VI.  Exclamation  Points .  97 

VII.  The  Spring  Song .  Ill 

VIII.  The  Discovert  of  America .  122 

IX.  The  Old  Time  Religion .  139 

X.  Parlor  or  Living  Room  ? .  155 

XI.  Calvary  and  Main  Street .  169 

XII.  A  Slice  of  the  Millennium .  178 

XIII.  Translating  the  Cross .  195 

XIV.  Words  Frequently  Mispronounced . 205 

XV.  The  Impulse  of  the  Resurrection . 221 

XVI.  In  a  World  of  Tangents .  232 

XVII.  A  Matter  of  Morale .  241 


I 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 

“A  number  of  demons  had  entered  him.” — 
Luke  8.  30  (Moffatt’s  translation). 

EVERY  man’s  mind  is  a  Haunted  House. 

Through  it  flit  the  ghosts  of  vanished  yes¬ 
terdays.  Former  tenants  who  once  held  sway 
there  come  back  in  ghostly  form  to  dispute 
possession.  Mysterious  opening  and  shutting 
of  doors  go  on  within  it.  The  presence  of 
shadowy  forms  in  dark  corners  disturbs  the 
peace  of  the  house.  There  have  been  many 
haunting  and  “creepy”  ghost  stories  told  since 
time  began,  but  the  most  weird  and  wonder¬ 
ful  ghost  story  is  that  of  the  Haunted  House 
in  every  man’s  being.  For  it  may  truly  be  said 
of  each  of  us,  as  it  was  said  of  the  strangely 
afflicted  man  in  the  tombs  of  the  gospel  story, 
“A  number  of  demons  had  entered  into  him.” 
A  number  of  demons,  of  spirits,  of  ghosts,  of 
the  forgotten  years  have  entered  into  us  and 
are  a  part  of  us.  We  are  the  heirs  of  all  ages, 

9 


10 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  all  the  past  both  in  our  individual  history 
and  that  of  the  race.  And  out  of  its  dim  dis¬ 
tance  the  ghostly  hands  of  what  we  used  to  be 
reach  out  and  grip  us.  Within  our  minds  there 
are  several  different  minds,  each  with  its  dif¬ 
ferent  characteristics  and  powers.  Our  name 
is  Legion,  for  we  are  many. 

There  are  not  many,  even  of  the  sophisti¬ 
cated,  whose  pulse  does  not  beat  hard  and  fast 
at  a  ghost  story,  a  tale  of  a  haunted  house. 
From  the  time  when  primitive  man  crouched 
in  terror  before  the  gruesome  apparitions  of 
his  own  imagination  till  to-day,  when  in  the 
flooding  light  of  twentieth  century  science  we 
still  shiver  when  a  ghost  story  is  dramatically 
told,  it  has  been  a  theme  to  hold  old  men  and 
children  spellbound.  “ Enter — the  ghost ”  is  a 
stage  direction  which  always  electrifies  the 
audience  even  wThen  the  ghost  is  himself  a 
product  of  electricity.  When  Shakespeare’s 
magic  curtain  rolls  up  and  discloses  the  lonely 
platform  at  Elsinore  and  the  spirit  of  the  mur¬ 
dered  king  of  Denmark  speaks  in  sepulchral 
tones  of  the  deep  damnation  of  his  taking  off, 
we  are  held  with  a  spell  as  potent  as  that  of 
the  Ancient  Mariner,  even  though  we  know 
every  stage  trick  in  the  catalogue.  So  it  is  in 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


11 


Macbeth  when  the  mysterious  and  frantic 
knocking  at  the  gate  echoes  through  the  castle 
like  the  crash  of  doom.  It  is  the  crash  of 
doom,  the  hammering  of  the  supernatural 
world  at  the  door  of  guilt.  And  later,  when 
Banquo’s  ghost  comes  unbidden  to  the  ban¬ 
quet,  we  feel  the  very  wind  of  the  eternal  world 
sweep  into  the  room  with  him.  When  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  weaves  about  us  the  enchanting  spell 
of  “The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher”  wTe  ac¬ 
tually  hear  the  ethereal  footsteps  pattering  up 
and  down  the  halls  of  the  haunted  house.  Our 
flesh  creeps  at  the  sound.  The  draughts  spring¬ 
ing  up  inexplicably  from  nowhere  and  blowing 
upon  our  face,  the  rattling  windows,  the  slam¬ 
ming  doors,  whisper  the  incantation — “ This 
house  is  haunted !” 

“A  number  of  demons  have  entered  us.” 
Come  on  a  ghost  search  in  the  most  wonderful 
and  mysterious  mansion  ever  built — the  hu¬ 
man  mind,  the  home  of  personality !  Its  walls 
are  hung  with  family  portraits  looking  down 
from  the  centuries.  Ancestral  voices  echo 
through  the  corridors.  Slip  the  key  boldly  into 
the  lock.  You  will  find  dark  corners  in  the 
house,  but  it  will  pay  to  flash  a  searchlight  into 
them.  You  will  know  yourself  better. 


4 


12  THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 

In  your  mind  there  are  three  different  peo¬ 
ple,  ghosts  of  former  tenants  who  used  to  live 
there,  and  who  in  shadowy  but  influential  form 
still  dwell  there — the  animal ,  the  savage,  and 
the  child.  The  tumult  of  life  comes  from  the 
fact  that  they  are  usually  at  cross  purposes 
with  the  twentieth-century  citizen  who  now 
holds  title  to  the  premises. 

In  his  penetrating  book,  The  Mind  in  the 
Making,  Professor  James  H.  Robinson  de¬ 
scribes  our  haunted  house: 

There  are  four  historical  layers  underlying  the  mind 
of  civilized  men — the  animal  mind,  the  child  mind,  the 
savage  mind,  and  the  traditional  civilized  mind.  We 
are  all  animals  and  can  never  cease  to  be;  we  were  all 
children  at  our  most  impressionable  age  and  can  never 
get  over  the  effects  of  that;  our  human  ancestors  have 
lived  in  savagery  during  practically  the  whole  existence 
of  the  race,  say  five  hundred  thousand  or  a  million  years, 
and  the  primitive  mind  is  ever  with  us;  finally,  we  are 
all  born  into  an  elaborate  civilization,  the  constant 
pressure  of  which  we  can  by  no  means  escape. 

We  may  grow  beyond  these  underlying  minds,  and  in 
the  light  of  new  knowledge  we  may  criticize  and  even 
persuade  ourselves  that  we  have  successfully  transcended 
them.  But  if  we  are  fair  with  ourselves,  we  shall  find 
that  their  hold  on  us  is  really  inexorable. 

In  all  our  reveries  and  speculations,  even  the  most 
exacting,  sophisticated,  and  disillusioned,  we  have  three 
unsympathetic  companions  sticking  closer  than  a  brother 
and  looking  on  with  jealous  impatience — our  wild,  apish 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


13 


progenitor,  a  playful  or  peevish  baby,  and  a  savage.  We 
may  at  any  moment  find  ourselves  overtaken  with  a 
warm  sense  of  camaraderie  for  any  or  all  of  these  ancient 
pals  of  ours,  and  experience  infinite  relief  in  once  more 
disporting  ourselves  with  them  as  of  yore.1 

The  ghostly  tenants  know  secret  passage¬ 
ways  through  our  personality  never  clearly 
located  in  the  light  of  day.  Doors  leading 
down  into  the  cellar  of  the  subconscious  open 
and  shut  without  our  deliberate  action.  Mvs- 
terious  tunnels  leading  back  to  the  stone  age 
exist  but  are  not  charted.  The  House  is 
haunted. 

It  was  a  quaint  complaint  of  Queen  Victoria 
against  Gladstone  that  he  always  “addressed 
her  as  though  she  were  a  public  meeting.”  That 
sentence  tells  us  more  of  “the  grand  manner” 
of  Gladstone  than  could  a  whole  volume.  But, 
after  all,  Gladstone  was  right.  Queen  Vic¬ 
toria  ivas  a  public  meeting.  Every  person  is 
a  public  meeting,  a  turbulent,  wrangling,  par¬ 
liamentary  assembly,  where  the  Opposition 
Bench  howls  and  filibusters  over  every  law 
which  the  administration  puts  through.  In 
the  intellectual,  moral,  and  emotional  clamor 

1  From  The  Mind  in  the  Making,  by  James  H.  Robinson,  Harper  & 
Brothers,  publishers,  copyrighted,  1921,  in  U.  S.  A. 


14 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


in  some  minds  the  dominant  voice  of  a  chair¬ 
man  is  never  heard  nor  the  sharp  pound  of  the 
gavel  demanding  order. 

I 

The  most  ancient  ghost  is  the  animal.  He 
was  here  first  and  lived  undisputed  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  race  for  a  space  of  time  so  long  that 
the  imagination  cannot  conceive  it.  Even  the 
soberest  guesses  of  scientists  sound  like  the 
more  fanciful  portions  of  Hans  Christian  An¬ 
dersen.  T.  H.  Huxley  guessed  that  life  on  the 
earth  had  existed  for  one  hundred  million 
years,  but  that  estimate  is  regarded  by  some  as 
a  product  of  typical  British  conservatism.  H. 
G.  Wells  says  in  his  Outline  of  History,  “That 
the  period  of  time  has  been  vast,  that  it  is  to  be 
counted  by  scores  and  possibly  by  hundreds  of 
millions  of  years,  is  the  utmost  that  can  be 
said  with  certainty  in  the  matter.  It  is  quite 
open  to  the  reader  to  divide  every  number  in 
the  time  diagram  by  ten  or  multiply  it  by  two ; 
no  one  can  gainsay  him.”2 

This  inconceivable  stretch  of  time  was,  with 
the  exception  of  a  microscopic  portion,  the 

J  H.  G.  Wells,  Outline  of  History.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The 
Macmillan  Company. 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


15 


period  in  which  the  animal  mind  was  devel¬ 
oped  in  the  great  unfolding  of  the  evolutionary 
process.  The  human  mind  has  been  a  late  ar¬ 
rival  in  the  house  of  life.  It  is  small  wonder 
that  with  so  long  a  tenancy  the  animal  mind 
within  us  has  left  so  active  and  living  a  mem¬ 
ory.  Our  physical  and  mental  being,  our 
nerves  and  muscles,  our  body  and  all  its  cells, 
remember  those  millions  of  years,  thrill  to 
their  memories,  feel  their  primitive  urge  in  all 
the  emotional  reactions  of  the  civilized  being. 
The  raw,  undisciplined  physical  instincts  and 
passions  do  not  often  come  out  into  the  open. 
They  are  held  on  leash  in  the  cellar  of  the  sub¬ 
conscious,  but  we  can  hear  the  ape  and  the 
tiger  growl. 

One  of  the  favorite  ghosts  in  all  literature  is 
the  departed  spirit  of  Jacob  Marley,  late  part¬ 
ner  of  Ebenezer  Scrooge.  We  have  all  heard 
with  shivering  emotions  the  clank  of  his  chain 
in  The  Christmas  Carol  as  he  ascends  the  stairs 
from  the  basement  of  Scrooge’s  house.  That 
ghost  coming  up  from  the  cellar  is  a  very  true 
as  well  as  vivid  picture  of  what  goes  on  in  the 
life  of  man,  when  the  ghost  of  the  late  head  of 
our  firm,  the  animal,  with  the  primitive  emo¬ 
tions  and  instincts,  climbs  up  out  of  the  cellar 


16 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  our  subconscious  mind  and  struggles  for 
the  dominion  of  the  house  for  his  rampant  de¬ 
sires.  The  widespread  present  study  of  the 
subconscious,  explorations  in  what  Professor 
Joseph  Jastrow  calls  “the  slums  of  psychol¬ 
ogy, have  revealed  what  an  ever-present  in¬ 
fluence  and  force  it  is.  There  is  more  than 
“slum”  to  the  subconscious,  though  psycho¬ 
analysis  has  so  far  chiefly  confined  its  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  ugly  and  sordid,  grotesquely  over¬ 
exaggerating  the  role  of  the  sex  instinct  as  the 
explanation  of  nearly  the  whole  of  life.  Never¬ 
theless,  it  has  emphasized  in  a  way  that  will 
prove  valuable  for  moral  education  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  this  animal  ghost  within  us. 

Here  is  man’s  first  struggle  for  dominion — a 
battle  royal  for  dominion  over  the  physical, 
animal  appetites.  For  when  the  animal  leaps 
upon  the  soul  and  tears  with  its  tiger  claws  the 
spiritual  faculties  it  leaves  as  woeful  devasta¬ 
tion  in  the  house  as  did  the  escaped  gorilla  in 
Poe’s  gruesome  story  of  “The  Murders  in 
the  Rue  Morgue.”  There  must  be  a  battle  on 
the  stairway  with  the  ghost  coming  up  from 
the  cellar,  a  battle  such  as  Jesus  pictured: 
“No  man  can  enter  into  a  strong  man’s  house, 
and  spoil  his  goods,  except  he  will  first  bind 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


17 


the  strong  man;  and  then  he  will  spoil  his 
house.” 

The  past  is  heavy.  Not  merely  our  own  past 
but  the  long,  dim  past  of  our  racial  inheri¬ 
tance.  It  drags.  We  gain  nothing  and  lose 
much  by  disregarding  its  presence  or  its  power. 

We  are  better  fortified  by  clearly  seeing  it  and 
making  the  prayer  of  Sidney  Lanier : 

“My  soul  is  sailing  through  the  sea 
But  the  Past  is  heavy  and  hindereth  me. 

The  Past  hath  crusted  cumbrous  shells 
That  hold  the  flesh  like  cold  sea-mells 
About  my  soul, 

The  high  waves  wash,  the  high  waves  roll. 

Each  barnacle  clingeth  and  worketh  dole,  ■> 

And  hindereth  me  from  sailing. 

“Old  Past  let  go,  and  drop  i’  the  sea, 

Till  fathomless  waters  cover  thee! 

For  I  am  living  but  thou  art  dead; 

Thou  drawest  back,  I  strive  ahead 
The  Day  to  find. 

Thy  shells  unbind!  Night  comes  behind, 

I  needs  must  hurry  with  the  wind, 

And  trim  me  best  for  sailing.”3 

But  we  do  not  need  to  bid  the  past  loose  its 
deadening  grip  by  our  owrn  hesitant  wrord.  We 
are  not  left  to  a  lonely  struggle  in  the  dark. 

*  From  Poems  of  Sidney  Lanier,  copyright,  1884-1918,  by  Mary  D. 
Lanier.  Published  by  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons. 


18 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


If  we  wrestle  with  principalities  and  powers, 
there  are  principalities  and  powers  that  are  on 
our  side.  We  are  heirs  of  all  the  ages,  but 
above  that  and  beyond  it,  we  are  the  heirs  of 
Jesus  Christ.  In  the  battle  of  flesh  and  soul 
his  energies  may  nerve  our  arm,  for  he  too 
walks  the  halls  of  the  ancestral  home.  His 
wisdom  and  power  will  teach  us  to  control, 
direct,  and  use  our  legacy  from  the  animal. 

II 

The  second  ghost  is  the  savage — another 
long-time  tenant  of  the  house  of  the  mind. 
It  is  a  long,  long  trail  from  to-day  with  all  the 
refinements  of  twentieth-century  civilization 
back  to  the  forests  of  northern  Europe  and 
western  Asia,  where  our  savage  ancestors 
roamed  with  their  clubs  and  spears  and  bows 
and  arrows.  It  is  so  far  removed  that  we  may 
persuade  ourselves  that  all  traces  of  the  cave- 
man  have  gone  from  us.  But  that  space  of 
time  is  but  as  a  short  week-end  compared  to 
the  ages  during  which  man  was  a  primeval 
savage.  And  his  ways  of  life,  his  habits  of 
thought  are  graven  deep  in  the  mind  of  the 
race.  We  cannot  banish  the  caveman  from 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


19 


within  us  by  changing  our  clothes,  shaving, 
putting  on  spectacles,  going  to  college,  or  rid¬ 
ing  in  electric  trains.  He  is  still  in  the  house. 
He  moves  up  and  down  the  hallways  of  the 
mind  and  suddenly  springs  upon  us  from  un¬ 
known  secret  closets  in  the  walls.  In  some 
way  we  must  come  to  some  adjustment  with 
him,  and  that  is  one  of  life’s  chief  problems.  It 
cannot  be  a  peace  without  victory  either.  A 
house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand. 

W.  J.  Fielding  writes :  “You  do  not  look  as 
though  you  had  a  savage  concealed  about  your 
person.  You  are  intelligent,  good-natured, 
generous,  honest,  gentle.  Perhaps  you  never 
think  that  the  ghost  of  this  savage  ancestor 
within  you  is  an  absolute  stranger  to  ethics, 
one  hundred  per  cent  selfish,  and  anti-social.” 

Yachel  Lindsay  in  his  poem  “The  Congo” 
has  picturesquely  described  the  survival  of  the 
traits,  habits,  and  ways  of  thinking  of  the  sav¬ 
ages  of  the  Congo  in  their  African  descendants 
in  America.  After  describing  the  antics  of  a 
carousing  group  of  Negroes,  he  catches  in  them 
a  glimpse  of  the  same  traits  in  their  ancestors 
in  the  jungle : 

“Then  I  saw  the  Congo,  creeping  through  the  black, 
Cutting  through  the  forest  with  a  golden  track. 


20 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Then  along  that  riverbank 

A  thousand  miles 

Tattooed  cannibals  danced  in  files; 

Then  I  heard  the  boom  of  the  blood-lust  song 
And  a  thigh-bone  beating  on  a  tin-pan  gong. 

And  ‘Blood!’  screamed  the  whistles  and  the  fifes  of 
the  warriors, 

‘Blood!’  screamed  the  skull-faced,  lean  witch  doctors, 
‘Whirl  ye  the  deadly  voo-doo  rattle, 

Harry  the  uplands, 

Steal  all  the  cattle, 

Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle, 

Bing. 

Boomlay,  boomlay,  boomlay,  BOOM.’  ”4 

“Creeping  through  the  black” — yes.  But  why 
pick  on  the  black?  We  can  see  the  savage 
creeping  through  the  white,  just  as  unmistak¬ 
ably.  And  through  the  yellow,  the  red,  and 
the  brown. 

The  savage  mind  manifests  itself  in  us 
partly  as  the  animal  mind  which  we  have  just 
described,  in  the  undisciplined  appetites  and 
instincts.  But  beyond  that,  in  the  survival  of 
savage  modes  of  thinking,  in  such  primitive 
forces  as  taboo  and  superstition,  blind  fears 
and  hatreds,  we  see  that  savage  mind  break 
loose,  when  the  restraints  of  individual  con¬ 
trol  give  way  to  the  mob  mind.  Then  we  have 

4  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The  Macmillan  Company;  from  Vachel 
Lindsay:  “The  Congo.” 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


21 


race  riots,  pogroms,  national  fevers,  and  crowd 
tyrannies. 

A  manifestation  of  the  savage  that  does  not 
strike  ns  as  having  anything  savage  about  it 
is  the  ultra-conventionality  wiiich  abjectly  fol¬ 
lows  the  law  of  the  tribe  in  all  the  details  of 
life.  Like  the  savage,  men  of  to-day  have  a 
deep  fear  of  taboo — of  thinking,  of  saying,  of 
doing,  of  even  feeling  in  a  manner  contrary  to 
the  particular  social  or  economic  or  national 
tribe  we  belong  to.  For  the  savage  was  the 
world’s  ultimate  Tory.  The  tribe  decided.  He 
followed.  Any  experiments  in  liberalism  were 
met  with  the  simple  expedient  of  extermina¬ 
tion.  Regulation  by  the  tribe  of  all  the  rela¬ 
tions  of  life  was  one  of  the  essential  character¬ 
istics  of  savage  life.  It  is  one  of  the  essential 
characteristics  of  the  many  who  regard  them¬ 
selves  as  the  most  highly  civilized  to-day. 

When  we  hear  the  expression,  “Savage  life 
in  North  America,”  we  think  of  the  Indian 
wandering  around  the  forest  with  his  bow  and 
arrow  and  tomahawk,  in  some  such  manner  as 
is  made  vivid  by  the  representations  in  the 
American  Museum  of  Natural  History  in  New 
York  City.  But  in  the  apartment  houses 
around  the  Museum  there  is  much  life  going 


22 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


on  just  as  essentially  savage  in  some  particu¬ 
lars.  The  haunts  of  savage  life  in  North  Amer¬ 
ica  are  on  Fifth  Avenue,  Michigan  Avenue,  and 
Main  Street — wherever  taboo  and  tribal  decree 
govern  undisputed. 

Tribal  thinking  dominated  the  savage.  The 
customs  of  the  clan  were  his  substitute  for 
mental  self-direction.  And  in  the  convention¬ 
alized  stereotypes  which  rule  so  wide  a  tract 
of  life  to-day, 

There  we  see  the  Congo 
Creeping  through  the  white. 


We  have  magazines  wilick  tell  us  dogmat¬ 
ically  “What  the  well-dressed  man  will  wear” 
and  “What  the  well-dressed  woman  will  wear.” 
Why  not  be  frank  and  label  their  editorial  col¬ 
umns,  “What  the  fashionable  men  and  women 
will  think”?  They  outline  the  fashion  taboo 
and  tell  just  what  is  forbidden  to  be  worn  be¬ 
fore  five  o’clock  in  the  afternoon  on  pain  of 
social  extinction.  They  might  also  record  the 
unwritten  taboos  and  tell  what  is  forbidden 
to  be  thought  or  said  before  it  becomes  the  com¬ 
monplace  of  every  street  corner.  “To  do  any¬ 
thing  because  others  do  it,”  says  Stevenson, 
“and  not  because  the  thing  is  good  or  kind,  or 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


23 


honest  in  its  own  right,  is  to  resign  all  moral 
control  or  captaincy  upon  yourself,  and  go 
post-haste  to  the  devil  with  the  greatest  num¬ 
ber.^ 

Primitive  men  and  women  roam  the  streets 
garbed  in  the  latest  mode.  Of  the  mechanics 
of  existing  and  dressing  they  are  remarkably 
well  informed.  But  their  essential  outlook  on 
life  is  remarkably  like  that  of  a  savage  in  mo¬ 
tives,  judgments,  passions,  and  ideas.  Civ¬ 
ilization  to  them  means  tailoring  shops,  lim¬ 
ousines,  formal  dress  for  dinner,  permanent 
hair  waves.  Their  family  name  is  Ab — the 
primitive  cave  man.  Dr.  Shailer  Mathews  says 
pungently,  “They  do  not  count  heads  as  the 
measure  of  their  success;  but  if  they  are  men, 
they  count  dollars;  if  women,  hearts.” 

This  ghost  lays  deadening  hands  on  all  prog¬ 
ress,  moral  and  mental  and  spiritual.  He 
makes  of  our  religious  life  an  unspiritual  fe¬ 
tish  worship ;  he  makes  our  thinking  reek  with 
cloudy  phrases ;  he  makes  our  moral  life  a  pet¬ 
rified  code  of  minor  taboos. 

Ill 

The  third  ghost  patters  about  the  house  with 
tiny  feet.  He  is  the  Child  you  used  to  he.  He 


24 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


still  roams  the  house,  thank  God!  For  that 
survival  of  the  child  in  you — down  on  your 
knees  and  thank  heaven,  fasting!  May  Riley 
Smith  has  caught  the  echo  of  these  tiny  foot¬ 
falls  : 

“She  follows  me  about  my  House  of  Life 
(This  happy  little  ghost  of  my  dead  Youth!) 

She  has  no  part  in  Time’s  relentless  strife 
And  laughs  at  grim  Mortality, 

This  deathless  Child  that  stays  with  me — 

(This  happy  little  ghost  of  my  dead  Youth!)” 

The  child  spirit  is  the  babbling  stream  from  the 
hills  which  keeps  the  pool  of  life  fresh  and  free 
from  scum.  May  it  never  be  choked  off !  An 
applicant  for  a  position  as  child’s  nurse  was 
once  asked,  “Have  you  ever  had  any  experience 
with  children?” 

“Sure,  ma’am,”  she  answered  readily,  “I 
used  to  be  a  child  myself.” 

She  uttered  the  profoundest  principle  of 
pedagogy.  Happy  the  person  who  remembers 
it !  George  Eliot  observes  in  The  Mill  on  the 
Floss  that  we  would  not  have  loved  the  natural 
beauty  of  the  world  nearly  so  much  if  we  had 
not  grown  up  in  it  as  children.  We  look  out 
on  it  not  only  through  our  eyes  but  through 
the  magic  lens  of  memory. 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


25 


But  not  all  the  survivals  of  the  child  are  al¬ 
lies  of  the  spirit.  Some  are  deadly  enemies 
which  bind  and  gag  the  soul.  Paul  recognized 
this.  “When  I  became  a  man  I  put  away  child¬ 
ish  things.”  “In  mind,  be  men,”  he  pleads. 
“Be  no  longer  children  carried  about  by  every 
wind  of  doctrine.” 

When  the  child  ghost  rules  the  mind,  the  af¬ 
flicted  person  lives  in  a  distorted  universe  of 
which  he  is  the  center.  Sun,  moon,  and  stars, 
and  even  Betelgeuse,  revolve  around  his  infan¬ 
tile  whims.  The  Italian  psychologist,  Fer- 
enczi,  has  marked  out  the  stages  of  a  baby’s 
development  which  have  a  striking  suggestive¬ 
ness  for  adult  infants.  “At  first,”  he  says, 
“the  baby  gets  some  of  the  things  it  wants  by 
crying  for  them.  This  is  the  period  of  magical 
hallucinatory  omnipotence  ”  How  many  in¬ 
fants  stay  just  there  for  sixty  years — in  the 
period  of  magical,  hallucinatory  omnipotence ! 
Especially  the  hallucinatory !  That  child  sur¬ 
vival  echoing  with  its  petulant  whine  through 
years  that  should  be  melodious  with  the  song 
of  love  and  service  is  one  of  the  ugliest  things 
in  the  world. 

The  second  period,  according  to  Ferenczi, 
is  when  the  child  secures  the  things  it  wants 


26 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


by  pointing  to  them.  “This,”  he  says,  “is  the 
period  of  omnipotence  by  the  help  of  magic  ges¬ 
tures ”  Magic  gestures!  How  well  we  know 
them  in  adult  life!  The  uplifted  hand — “I 
am  now  about  to  speak.  Let  all  the  earth  keep 
silence  before  me.”  The  pointing  index  finger 
— “Bring  me  this,”  “get  me  that.”  And  how 
infinitely  weary  they  make  us! 

The  child  mind  is  characterized  also  by  a 
blurred  inability  to  make  the  distinctions  nec¬ 
essary  to  competent  judgments.  When  this 
survives  into  adult  years  the  world  is  shrouded 
in  a  fog  in  which  the  person  is  the  prey  of  his 
chance  impressions,  his  prejudices  and  fears, 
and  the  moral  and  spiritual  progress  depend¬ 
ent  on  clear  vision  are  impossible.  Walter 
Lippmann  in  his  Public  Opinion  has  pointed 
this  out  in  a  description  carrying  a  keen  thrust 
of  satire : 

The  power  to  dissociate  superficial  analogies,  attend 
to  differences  and  appreciate  variety  is  lucidity  of  mind. 
It  is  a  relative  faculty.  Yet  the  differences  in  lucidity 
are  as  extensive,  say,  as  between  a  newly  born  infant 
and  a  botanist  examining  a  flower.  To  the  infant  there 
is  precious  little  difference  between  his  own  toes,  his 
father’s  watch,  the  lamp  on  the  table,  the  moon  in  the 
sky,  and  a  nice  bright  yellow  edition  of  Guy  de  Maupas¬ 
sant.  To  many  a  member  of  the  Union  League  Club, 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


27 


there  is  no  remarkable  difference  between  a  Democrat,  a 
Socialist,  an  anarchist,  and  a  burglar.  While  to  a  highly 
sophisticated  anarchist,  there  is  a  whole  universe  of 
difference  between  Bakunin,  Tolstoy,  and  Kropotkin. 
These  examples  show  how  difficult  it  might  be  to  secure 
a  sound  public  opinion  about  de  Maupassant  among 
babies,  or  about  Democrats  in  the  Union  League  Club.5 

“In  mind  be  men.”  The  story  of  Peter  Pan, 
the  little  boy  who  never  grew  up,  on  the  stage, 
is  a  delightful  comedy.  In  real  life  it  is  a 
tragedy. 

IY 

There  is  another  spirit  abroad  in  the  House. 
It  is  the  Owner.  Nothing  can  ever  quite 
drive  him  out,  though  much  may  hinder  him. 
We  have  called  our  mind  an  ancestral  mansion. 
So  it  is.  It  is  Our  Father’s  House.  He  has 
always  lived  there.  He  always  will.  His  pres¬ 
ence  is  upon  us  and  around  us.  We  bear  the 
impress  of  his  hands. 

“Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

Nor  yet  in  utter  nakedness, 

But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come.” 

The  principal  ghost  in  man’s  house  of  life — 
let  us  say  it  with  all  reverence  and  awe — is  the 


6  From  Public  Opinion,  by  Walter  Lippmann,  copyright,  1922,  by 
Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc. 


28 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Holy  Gliost.  It  is  the  abiding  presence  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  in  the  sonl.  That  spirit  may  be 
the  order  of  the  house  as  well  as  its  peace. 
“Where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  lib¬ 
erty.”  When  wxe  allow  that  Spirit  of  God  to 
have  free  course  in  us  and  take  control  he 
brings  the  warring  tenants  to  order  and  con¬ 
cord.  The  grace  of  God  in  the  heart  and  mind 
can  take  the  forces  of  all  our  ancestral  inher¬ 
itances  and  not  suppress  them  but  give  them 
new  direction  and  employment  and  make  them 
allies  of  the  soul. 

That  is  a  notable  prayer  in  the  Psalms, 
“Unite  my  heart  to  fear  thy  name.”  That  pe¬ 
tition  goes  to  the  root  of  the  deepest  need  of 
a  divided  life  with  its  discordant  forces  in  con¬ 
flict.  The  Spirit  of  God  answers  that  prayer 
and  fuses  the  whole  personality  into  one  great 
experience  and  purpose.  He  makes  life  unani¬ 
mous.  It  is  through  the  energy  of  that  spirit 
that  men  may  rise  on  stepping-stones  of  their 
dead  selves  to  higher  things. 

There  is  a  small  religious  sect  in  the  United 
States  with  a  queer-sounding  name — “The 
Holy  Ghost  and  Us.”  No  doubt  it  is  ridiculous 
as  a  name  for  a  society,  but  it  enshrines  the 
central  truth  of  the  Christian  evangel.  Life  is 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


29 


distinctly  an  affair  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  us. 
Many  spirits  have  entered  us,  but  one  Spirit 
has  remained  in  us,  Lord  of  them  all.  “God 
hath  sent  forth  the  Spirit  of  his  Son  into  your 
hearts,  crying,  Abba,  Father.” 


II 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT 

He  that  laeJceth  these  things  is  blind and  can¬ 
not  see  afar  off. — 2  Peter  1.  9. 

SEEING  only  what  is  near,  we  miss  the 
stars.  Seeing  only  what  is  near,  life’s  fair¬ 
est  landscape  becomes  a  blur.  Near-sighted¬ 
ness  condemns  us  to  the  poverty  of  half  life, 
missing  the  deeper  distances,  the  skylines,  the 
blue  hills.  Beyond  the  immediate  front  porch 
the  nearsighted  man  sees  all  things  through  a 
glass  darkly.  To  him,  as  to  the  vision  of  a 
child,  the  larger  aspects  of  life  remain  “a 
buzzing,  blooming  blur.”  Moffatt’s  transla¬ 
tion  of  the  words  of  Jesus  in  the  King  James 
version  of  Matthew,  “If  your  eye  be  single,” 
is  “If  your  eye  be  generous ,  the  whole  of  your 
body  will  be  illumined.”  Now,  eyes  that  see 
only  what  is  near  are  stingy  eyes.  They  report 
only  a  small  segment  of  the  human  scene.  A 
generous  eye  says  to  the  mind,  “Here  it  is. 
Take  it  all,  long  and  short,  far  and  near !” 

In  that  sense  Robert  Browning  had  the  most 

30 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  31 


generous  eyes  ever  set  as  windows  before  a 
human  mind.  They  were  very  abnormal  in 
their  physical  construction  and  power.  Few 
people,  if  any,  have  ever  possessed  exactly  the 
same  combination  of  eyes.  They  were  not 
twins;  they  hardly  seemed  to  belong  to  the 
same  family.  Yet  their  team  work  and  power 
of  seeing  minutely  both  the  near  and  the  far 
make  them  symbols  of  the  ideal  grasp  of  these 
two  aspects  of  life — the  immediate  foreground 
and  the  remote  background. 

What  a  theme  for  a  critic  of  literature,  or 
a  poet — Robert  Browning’s  eyes!  How  they 
could  catch  the  fleeting  beauty  of  a  dew-pearled 
hillside  at  dawn !  How  clearly  they  could  see 
down  the  twisted  lanes  of  human  character 
and  motive!  How  they  could  peer  through 
the  heavy  veil  of  the  material  world  to  the 
very  face  of  God!  A  pair  of  eyes  in  ten  mil¬ 
lion  ! 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Browning’s  eyes  were 
unique  physically  as  well  as  spiritually.  Wil¬ 
liam  Lyon  Phelps  tells  us  of  their  strange  mat¬ 
ing  and  strange  powers : 

Browning’s  eyes  were  peculiar,  one  having  a  long 
focus,  the  other  very  short.  He  had  the  unusual  accom¬ 
plishment  (try  it  and  prove)  of  closing  either  eye  with- 


32 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


out  squinting,  and  without  any  apparent  effort,  though 
sometimes  in  the  street  in  strong  sunshine,  his  face 
would  be  a  bit  distorted.  He  did  all  his  reading  and 
writing  with  one  eye,  closing  the  long  one  as  he  sat 
down  at  his  desk.  He  never  wore  glasses,  and  was  proud 
of  his  microscopic  eye.  He  often  wrote  minutely,  to 
show  off  his  power.  When  he  left  the  house  to  go  for  a 
walk  he  shut  the  short  eye  and  opened  the  long  one,  with 
which  he  could  see  an  immense  distance.1 

Browning’s  eyes  could  look  out  on  any  scene 
and  report  both  the  long  and  short  of  it.  They 
were  a  strange  couple — a  microscopic  and  a 
telescopic  eye  united  in  the  holy  bonds  of 
matrimony !  What  a  joy  it  would  be  to  shut 
off  our  microscopic  eye  and  open  the  telescopic 
one  when  we  wished  to  look  at  the  mountains 
and  apply  it  vice  versa ,  when  we  wanted  to 
read.  We  could  then  say  truly : 

“I  am  monarch  of  all  I  survey. 

My  right  there  is  none  to  dispute,” 

for  nothing,  certainly,  far  or  near  would  escape 
us. 

Such  team  work  of  far  and  near  sight  would 
give  to  the  inner  eye  of  the  mind  an  ideal  vision 
of  the  world.  What  a  full-orbed  personality 

1  From  Browning:  How  to  Know  Him,  by  William  Lyon  Phelps.  Copy¬ 
right,  1915.  Used  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Bobbs-Merrill 
Company. 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  33 


such  an  outlook  on  life  would  give !  So  often 
we  have  only  one  kind  of  vision.  We  look  out 
on  our  world  either  with  a  microscopic  eye, 
keen  for  immediate  details,  blind  to  remoter 
factors  and  consequences,  or  with  a  telescopic 
eye  wdiich  leaves  out  the  foreground.  With 
either  alone  the  world  is  out  of  drawing.  We 
either  look  up  at  the  stars  and  fall  into  the 
ditch,  or  avoid  both  the  stars  and  the  ditch. 
It  is  a  tragedy  either  way. 

We  are  descendants  of  one-eyed  Cyclops. 
The  twentieth-century  Cyclops  throws  his  one 
eye  like  a  burning  glass  on  his  restricted  fields 
of  interest,  or  on  the  things  peculiarly  con¬ 
genial  to  his  temperament.  The  rest  of  the 
world  is  a  blank,  a  vacuum.  The  business 
world  knows  Mr.  Cyclops  well.  His  mastery 
of  detail  is  matched  only  by  his  energy.  He 
can  make  two  orders  grow  where  only  one  grew 
before.  The  Cyclops  Manufacturing  Company 
is  a  marvel  of  efficiency.  Its  overhead,  cost¬ 
accounting  and  labor  turnover  all  come  under 
the  gleaming  eye  of  Mr.  Cyclops  himself.  But 
that  eye  has  a  fixed  focus.  It  is  riveted  to  that 
little  world  of  production  and  sales  as  immov¬ 
ably  as  a  searchlight  employed  to  illuminate 
an  advertising  sign  on  Broadway.  It  never 


34 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


swings  up  into  the  sky  peering  into  the  heav¬ 
ens.  It  never  looks  down  into  the  street  on 
the  multitude.  Spiritual  aspirations  and  wide 
human  sympathies  are  both  shut  out  of  the 
life  of  the  man  who  sees  only  what  is  near. 

Or  perhaps  it  is  Professor  Cyclops  with  his 
eye  fixed  on  remote  speculation,  but  quite 
helpless  to  find  his  way  across  the  street.  No 
doubt  you  will  think  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cyclops 
sweeping  the  sky  with  telescopic  eye  to  the 
neglect  of  the  small  midgets  of  humanity  in 
his  parish  which  require  a  closer  focus.  Or 
what  an  impressive  figure  Senator  Cyclops 
makes!  How  eloquent  his  rendition  of  Wash¬ 
ington’s  Farewell  Address,  warning  against  en¬ 
tangling  alliances !  How  satisfying  it  must  be 
to  the  great  man  to  resemble  Washington  in 
one  particular,  at  any  rate.  His  microscopic 
statesmanship  can  take  into  its  ken  a  whole 
state  such  as  Massachusetts  or  Missouri,  but 
it  cannot  span  the  Atlantic.  Yet  with  what 
impassioned  patriotism  he  glows  when  the 
Rivers  and  Harbors  Appropriations  are  at 
stake  or  a  federal  building  for  his  district 
hangs  in  the  balance  ! 

It  is  a  finely  balanced  mind  and  spirit  which 
sees  both  near  and  far.  It  is  a  complete  man 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  35 


to  whom  the  present  duty  and  the  ultimate 
ideal  are  both  visible  and  to  whom  both  gen¬ 
eral  truths  and  individual  people  appeal. 
In  a  supreme  way  Jesus  saw  both  the  back¬ 
ground  and  the  foreground.  He  never  lost 
sight  of  the  heavens.  He  was  never  so  im¬ 
mersed  with  the  task  of  the  moment  that  he 
forgot  the  other  sheep  in  the  distance.  Look¬ 
ing  out  on  the  multitude,  he  was  touched  with 
compassion.  He  was  never  so  intent  on  truth 
that  he  forgot  that  it  was  supper  time  and  that 
the  crowd  was  hungry.  What  tender,  loving 
observation  he  had  of  the  details  of  daily  life ! 
What  sensitive  sympathy  which  could  pick  out 
of  a  passing  throng  the  one  person  who  needed 
him  most,  as  he  did  with  the  woman  who 
touched  the  hem  of  his  garment! 

i 

I 

It  is  essential  for  life’s  balance  and  service 
to  keep  our  power  of  seeing  clearly  the  fore - 
ground  of  the  moment  and  situation.  Dr. 
Richard  C.  Cabot  tells  of  a  man  being  carried 
into  a  hospital  for  an  operation.  Nurses  and 
doctors  were  deeply  concerned;  so  deeply  con¬ 
cerned,  in  fact,  that  no  one  had  time  to  notice 
that  the  man  was  clamoring  for  a  drink  of 


36 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


water.  Of  course  lie  needed  an  operation  and 
was  going  to  have  one !  Meanwhile  his  imme¬ 
diate  need  was  a  drink.  But  that  was  a  detail 
in  the  foreground  that  no  one  noticed. 

That  is  a  picture  of  very  common  neglect. 
Occupied  with  what  we  regard  as  important 
concerns,  we  are  blind  to  the  personalities  in 
front  of  us.  We  look  at  them  or,  rather, 
through  them  as  though  they  were  transparent, 
made  of  glass.  We  are  like  the  man  in  the  gos¬ 
pel  who  was  being  cured  of  his  blindness.  He 
reached  a  stage  where  he  saw  men  as  trees 
walking.  We  have  the  same  eye  trouble.  We 
look  at  people  as  though  they  were  trees ;  that 
is,  as  though  they  were  mere  parts  of  the  land¬ 
scape.  A  man  will  size  up  the  contents  of  an 
office  as  “four  desks,  three  filing  cabinets  and 
two  stenographers.”  There  is  a  phrase  which 
has  become  stereotyped  and  cold  and  usually 
mechanical,  “What  can  I  do  for  you?”  It  can 
be  as  harsh  as  a  worn  phonograph  record. 
Nevertheless,  such  an  unconscious  attitude 
which  says  to  everyone,  “What  can  I  do  for 
you?”  is  essential  to  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

When  we  are  blind  to  the  foreground ,  we 
lose  sight  of  the  immediate  step  necessary. 
That  is  why  so  much  of  the  social  teaching  of 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  37 


Christianity  dissolves  into  thin  air.  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  a  social  ideal;  but  we  are  content 
often  to  state  the  ideal  and  take  no  immediate 
step  in  its  direction.  We  publish  the  “Social 
Creed  of  the  Churches”  on  neat  little  cards 
and  offer  them  for  distribution  for  ten  cents  a 
hundred.  But  we  do  not  bother  much  about 
a  garment  workers’  strike  where  our  approval 
of  an  eight-hour  day  logically  demands  that  we 
take  off  our  coats  and  give  our  words  some 
meaning.  We  do  not  even  bother  to  learn  what 
a  shopmen’s  strike,  or  a  coal  strike  is  about; 
at  least,  not  until  the  coal  in  our  own  cellar 
begins  to  get  uncomfortably  low ! 

So  it  is  with  the  problem  of  peace.  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  not  only  an  ideal  of  international 
peace  but  also  a  means  of  reaching  it.  The  im¬ 
mediate  step  needed  is  an  agreement  on  defi¬ 
nite  actions,  devising  machinery  for  effective 
protest;  yes,  for  effective  refusal ,  to  take  part 
in  war.  When  that  is  done  the  world  may  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  church  means  something.  Until 
that  is  done,  it  will  listen  with  complacency  to 
all  the  Christmas  anthems  ever  sung. 

In  the  foreground  of  every  church  is  its  fam¬ 
ily  of  children — the  Sunday  school.  But  the 
Sunday  school  is  frequently  only  an  ill-cared- 


38 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


for  stepchild  of  the  church.  This  is  very 
strange,  for  Christianity’s  chief  reliance  is  on 
education.  The  church  as  a  rule  sees  the  far 
landscape  of  Christian  ideals.  But  upon  the 
immediate  educational  task  which  is  right  at 
its  feet  it  has  no  clear  focus.  We  blindly  trans¬ 
late  Jesus’  great  word,  “Suffer  little  children 
to  come  unto  me,”  into  a  shorter  form  and  say 
in  effect,  “Suffer ,  little  children !”  And  we  see 
to  it  that  they  do  suffer  from  crude  and  inade¬ 
quate  educational  processes  which  have  no 
right  to  the  name.  When  the  child  escapes 
from  this  rough  handling  and  utterly  inade¬ 
quate  school  of  religion  and  squirms  out  of  our 
hands  we  feel  deeply  injured  and  perplexed. 
The  trouble  comes  from  overlooking  the  funda¬ 
mental  and  immediate  task  which  the  church 
has  in  the  religious  education  of  its  children. 
Let  us  suggest  a  standing  want  advertisement : 


:  Wanted:  By  The  Church  of  Christ,  Main  : 
:  Street,  Everywhere:  A  Microscopic  Eye  : 


II 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  need  for  the  far- 
seeing  eye  adjusted  to  eternity  and  the  realities 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  39 


of  the  spiritual  world?  It  is  that  eye  for  which 
the  apostle  is  pleading  in  our  text.  It  is  that 
far-seeing  eye  which  the  world  needs  to-day 
and  is  pleading  for  in  groans  that  cannot  be 
uttered.  It  is  that  telescopic  eye  for  which, 
mutely  and  unconsciously,  every  superficial, 
fragmentary  and  unfulfilled  life  is  pleading. 

“No  man’s  work  is  greater  than  his  soul.” 
To-day  the  soul  is  suffering  from  low  visibility. 
The  atmosphere  is  so  charged  with  the  coal 
dust  of  commercialism,  and  the  fog  of  bewilder¬ 
ment  that  the  background  of  spiritual  values 
is  obscured. 

There  is  a  current  phrase  frequently  used — 
“I  see  by  the  morning  paper.”  That  is  all  some 
people  ever  see  by.  It  is  their  only  eye.  Now, 
not  everything  in  this  world  can  be  seen  by 
the  morning  paper!  What  queer  selections 
from  the  great  pageant  of  life  the  morning 
paper  makes !  How  little  it  records  the  noble 
ideals  of  millions!  How  it  passes  over  the 
obscure  heroisms  and  loyalties  of  lives  outside 
of  the  spot  light!  But  just  those  very  gaps 
exist  in  the  world  of  large  numbers  of  people 
buried  like  moles  in  newspapers  and  whose 
sole  organs  of  vision  are  the  headlines. 

A.  G.  Gardiner  has  summed  up  this  lack  of 


40 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


the  deeper  understanding  of  life  very  keenly 
in  a  description  of  Lord  Northcliffe: 

Lord  Northcliffe  has  a  passion  to  be  powerful  and  the 
means  to  be  powerful,  but  he  does  not  know  what  to  be 
powerful  about.  His  career  is  thronged  with  thrilling 
incidents,  but  it  has  no  direction.  It  is  like  the  wild 
night-drive  on  which  Tony  Lumpkin  charioted  his 
mother.  It  was  full  of  sensations  and  adventures,  but 
at  the  end  Mrs.  Hardcastle  found  she  had  only  careered 
round  and  round  the  domestic  pond. 

Our  need  is 


“To  see 

Life,  not  the  daily  coil,  but  as  it  is 
Lived  in  its  beauty  in  eternity, 

Above  base  aim,  beyond  our  miseries; 

Life  that  is  speed  and  color  and  bright  bliss, 

And  beauty  seen  and  strained  for,  and  possessed 
Even  as  a  star  forever  in  the  breast.”* 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  business 
man  must  have  two  common  qualities  in  an  un¬ 
common  degree.  He  must  see  truly  and  act 
decisively.  He  may  be  compared  to  the 
painter,  who  must  have  equal  truth  of  vision 
and  of  hand.  The  business  man  who  has  only 
the  first  quality  is  a  dreamer ;  he  who  has  only 
the  second  is  a  blunderer. 

5  From  “Poems”  by  John  Masefield.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The 
Macmillan  Company. 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  41 


In  our  world  there  are,  of  course,  many 
dreamers.  Rut  who  shall  number  the  legion  of 
blunderers — those  who  act  without  seeing? 

We  need  a  vision  of  the  purpose  and  the 
beauty  and  the  power  of  life.  Emerson  says 
that  we  go  into  the  garden  Sunday  morning 
and  look  across  the  fields  to  the  distant  woods. 
But  on  Monday  morning  we  do  not  see  the 
woods;  we  peep  after  weeds  and  bugs.  Para¬ 
phrasing  Wordsworth  we  might  say,  “The  bugs 
are  too  much  with  us” — 

The  deep  thing  the  matter  with  the  world  is 
the  absence  of  an  ideal  and  spiritual  back¬ 
ground  to  the  picture.  It  is  when  the  ideal 
drops  out  of  our  minds  that  we  become  the 
helpless  victims  of  the  misfortunes  and  hard 
conditions  of  life.  Professor  Hocking  in  his 
book  on  Morale  has  well  stressed  what  great 
dependence  the  soldier  has  on  idealism  if  he  is 
to  keep  his  spirit  alive : 

He  is  more  exposed  than  any  other  human  being  to 
the  insistence  of  the  material  facts,  and  so  to  a  sort  of 
disillusion  and  fatalistic  slump.  The  foreground  of  his 
life  is  apparently  hardrheaded,  realistic,  sordid;  the 
feelings  and  sentiments  that  were  in  evidence  during  the 
recruiting  campaign  have  retired  to  the  background.  He 
finds  himself  summoned  to  “pack  up  his  troubles  in  the 
old  kit-bag”  and  if  he  is  wise  he  does  so;  but  the  philos- 


42 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


ophy  of  “smile’'  hardly  meets  all  his  requirements;  he 
recognizes  it  for  what  it  is,  less  a  philosophy  than  a  life- 
preserver.* 

A  “life  preserver”  will  not  take  the  place  of 
a  philosophy  or  of  a  religious  faith  which  looks 
out  on  life  and  finds  there  a  great,  purposeful 
God.  We  have  concentrated  so  much  on  the 
superficialities  of  the  immediate  foreground  of 
our  activities  that  we  lose  the  sustaining  vision 
of  life’s  larger  significance. 

Robert  Owen  once  came  to  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  and  told  him  of  his  elaborate  scheme 
of  the  world’s  mistakes  and  the  resulting  evils. 
To  Owen  the  five  fundamental  evils  in  the 
world  were,  religious  perplexities,  money  dif¬ 
ficulties;,  disappointment  in  love,  intemper¬ 
ance,  and  anxiety  for  offspring.  “You  are  very 
external  with  your  evils,  Mr.  Owen,”  said  Em¬ 
erson,  “let  me  give  you  some  real  mischiefs. 
Living  for  show ,  losing  the  whole  in  the  par¬ 
ticular,  indulgence  of  vital  power  in  trivial¬ 
ities.” 

With  Emerson’s  so-called  mischiefs  in  mind 
look  at  that  much  of  the  world  which  you  can 
see  from  your  front  and  back  window  and 

*  From  Morale  and  Its  Enemies.  Reprinted  by  permission  Yale 
University  Press. 


THE  LONG  AND  SHORT  OF  IT  43 


judge  whether  he  does  not  penetrate  rather 
deeply  into  the  weaknesses  of  life  when  the 
background  of  spiritual  values  is  left  out. 

Jesus  painted  the  background  toward  which 
the  eye  of  man  should  look  in  his  portrayal  of 
the  soul’s  relation  to  God,  in  his  valuation  of 
life  and  God’s  purpose  in  the  world. 

The  great  enemy  of  religion  in  our  day  is 
secularism,  that  false  standard  of  values  which 
takes  the  life  of  the  moment  and  of  the  senses 
as  the  ultimate  reality.  Against  this  practical 
atheism  we  must  set  the  moral  idealism  of 
Jesus.  When  we  have  his  background  in  our 
picture  we  shall  know  with  Browning  that 
“Life  is  a  greater  and  grander  thing  than  any 
fool’s  illusion  about  it.” 


Ill 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE 

The  Son  of  man  is  come  to  seek  and  to  save  that 
which  was  lost. — Luke  19.  10. 

IN  Ms  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse ,  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  has  a  searching  story  entitled 
“The  Intelligence  Office.”  He  tells  of  a  mys¬ 
terious  stranger  who  came  to  a  colonial  seaport 
town  of  New  England  and  opened  an  office  for 
the  recovery  of  lost  things.  He  offered  to  find 
for  any  one  of  the  villagers  anything  which 
he  had  lost.  After  a  period  of  aloofness,  one 
by  one  the  people  of  the  village  made  their  way 
to  him,  many  under  the  cover  of  night.  Some, 
of  course,  came  to  recover  lost  money;  others 
for  more  difficult  things,  more  elusive  to  re¬ 
cover  when  once  gone.  A  woman  came  to  him 
seeking  her  lost  youth.  One  man  was  looking 
for  his  lost  innocence.  He  had  made  the  bitter 
discovery  that 

“The  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me.” 

44 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  45 


Another  was  looking  for  the  lost  feeling  of 
joy  in  the  morning.  One  woman  came  at  night 
seeking  to  recover  a  lost  name,  that  had  once 
gleamed  fair  but  had  been  trampled  in  the 
dust. 

What  a  searching  parable  of  life! 

What  if  there  were  such  an  office — how  we 
would  flock  to  it,  even  those  whom  we  would 
least  suspect  of  having  lost  anything! 

It  is  appalling  how  many  things  are  lost 
in  a  great  city  in  the  course  of  a  year.  More 
than  a  million  articles  a  year  pass  through 
the  “Lost  and  Found”  department  in  New 
York  city.  Go  into  the  “Lost  and  Found” 
office  of  any  street-car  system  and  you 
will  find  an  assortment  of  human  impedi¬ 
menta  beyond  the  imagination  to  conceive. 
There  are  hundreds  of  umbrellas.  Of  course 
any  intelligent  person  could  lose  an  umbrella. 
You  were  there  looking  for  an  umbrella  your¬ 
self !  But  in  addition  to  the  umbrellas,  I  no¬ 
ticed  a  bass  drum  on  my  last  trip.  You  would 
think  that  one  would  sort  of  miss  a  bass  drum 
if  he  had  left  it  anywhere !  There  were  a  whole 
flock  of  baby  carriages,  stacks  of  pocketbooks, 
and  very  suggestive  were  a  collection  of  lost 
Bibles.  In  fact,  everything  was  there  except 


46 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


the  things  that  ought  to  have  been  there — lost 
heads!  This  massive  pile  of  things  is  only  a 
symbol  of  the  other  losses  in  a  city  in  a  year ; 
things  so  intangible  that  they  cannot  be  heaped 
together  in  piles.  It  is  significant  that  Wins¬ 
ton  ChurchilPs  novel  called  The  Far  Country , 
does  not  tell  of  a  boy  who  went  away  into  the 
far  country  of  profligate  dissipation,  but  un¬ 
folds  the  more  subtle  story  of  a  man  of  fine, 
God-fearing  New  England  ancestry,  who  in  the 
practice  of  law  in  a  great  city  has  had  his  high 
ideals  and  standards  blunted  and  whittled 
away  and  pared  down.  The  losses  in  a  year  in 
a  city  are  heaviest  in  lost  ideals.  Think  of  the 
lost  church  letters,  and  the  lapsed  purposes 
which  they  represent !  Think  of  the  warm  sym¬ 
pathies  petrified! 

What  a  boon  Hawthorne’s  intelligence  office 
would  be  for  all  of  us !  Here  is  something  very 
like  it — “ Jesus  of  Nazareth  passeth  by.”  No 
aspect  of  his  many-sided  life  is  more  fascinat¬ 
ing  than  to  watch  him  as  the  Great  Discoverer 
of  lost  things  for  those  who  crossed  his  path. 

The  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  greatest 
detective  story  ever  told  or  written.  Follow 
him  down  the  road  a  bit,  and  see  the  Great  Re- 
coverer  at  work.  For  Peter  he  finds  his  lost 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  47 


peace.  You  remember  that  early  morning 
twilight  scene  on  the  Sea  of  Galilee  where 
Peter,  in  the  depths  of  shame  and  despair, 
meets  his  risen  Master.  And  as  Jesus,  without 
any  hot  and  bitter  reproach  looks  into  his  eyes 
and  asks  him  that  simple  question,  “ Simon, 
son  of  Jonas,  lovest  thou  me?”  peace  returns 
to  the  heart  of  Peter,  like  the  turning  of  a 
tide.  For  a  woman  who  had  lost  her  fair  name 
he  restored  it  once  more  untainted  and  pure. 
“Thy  sins  which  are  many  are  forgiven  thee, 
go  and  sin  no  more.”  For  the  wearied  invalid 
waiting  at  the  pool  at  Bethsaida,  he  recovered 
lost  hope .  Do  you  know  what  it  is  to  hope  for 
a  thing  through  the  years  meeting  disappoint¬ 
ment  after  disappointment,  till  hope  dwindles 
down  to  nothing  but  a  heartache?  Then  you 
can  tell  just  how  that  waiting  man  at  the  pool 
felt  at  each  repeated  failure  to  be  cured  when 
the  opportunity  came.  Then  Jesus  comes  that 
way.  And  that  hope  which  was  utterly  gone 
is  found  and  restored.  He  recovered  and 
brought  back  to  men  that  elusive  thing — lost 
courage.  The  disciples  were  meeting  after  the 
crucifixion  behind  closed  doors,  beaten  in 
spirit.  Their  courage  had  all  oozed  out  at  the 
finger  tips.  Then  Jesus  came,  the  doors  being 


48 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


shut  and  said,  “Peace  be  unto  you.”  Courage 
came  back  like  new  blood  leaping  through  their 
veins. 

He  walks  our  streets  to-day — up  Broadway, 
down  Main  Street,  across  City  Hall  Square. 
He  stops  in  front  of  us  with  a  wistful  glance. 
The  Best  Seeker  is  at  our  service.  Usually  we 
think  of  our  text  in  connection  with  the  limit¬ 
less  extent  of  God’s  love.  May  we  think  now 
of  Christ’s  intensive  search  for  things  in  in¬ 
dividuals,  for  those  capacities  and  those 
powers  which  are  ours  by  right  and  which  we 
ought  to  have  but  which  have  slipped  away 
from  us. 


I 

The  major  search  of  the  Great  Restorer  was 
for  lost  harmony  between  man  and  God.  He 
stood  before  the  blind  beggar  at  Jericho  and 
restored  his  sight.  What  he  did  was  to  bring 
the  inner  nerve  of  the  eye  into  restored  har¬ 
mony  with  the  outer  world  of  light.  Christ 
stands  before  each  one  of  us  to  recover  for  us 
the  harmony  between  the  soul  and  God.  Some¬ 
times  the  harmony  is  lost  in  the  sense  that  it 
used  to  be  present  and  has  slipped  away,  as 
when  a  shooting  star  drops  out  of  its  orbit  and 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  49 


vanishes.  Sometimes  harmony  is  lost  only  in 
the  sense  that  it  has  never  been  achieved,  just 
as  the  desert  waste  has  never  been  brought 
into  the  right  harmony  with  the  sky  and  the 
climate  in  order  that  its  possibility  of  fruit¬ 
fulness  might  be  developed. 

The  deep  explanation  which  Jesus  made  of 
what  was  wrong  with  the  world  was  that 
it  was  out  of  harmony  with  the  will  of  God. 
Consequently,  he  did  not  bother  much  with 
tinkering  a  little  bit  here  and  there  on  the  po¬ 
litical  or  economic  situation.  He  did  not  pay 
much  attention  to  those  things.  He  sought  to 
lay  bare  and  cure  the  fundamental  ills.  A 
derelict  ship  which  is  out  of  its  course  with  a 
broken  compass  may  need  many  things.  Un¬ 
questionably,  it  needs  new  paint.  It  needs  new 
brass  rails.  But  it  needs  one  thing  supremely 
— to  get  back  into  harmony  with  the  stars,  to 
establish  a  response  to  the  heavens  on  the  part 
of  its  steering  gear,  so  that  it  may  find  the  path 
to  its  desired  haven.  A  derelict  life  has  many 
needs,  but  underlying  them  all  it  needs  just 
what  the  ship  needs — harmony  with  the  stars. 
It  needs  response  to  God  and  those  laws  of  God 
which  are  the  pilot  stars  for  the  navigation  of 
life. 


50 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Jesus  restored  harmony  with  God.  In  his 
revelation  of  God’s  true  nature  he  uncovered 
the  sky.  His  incarnation  of  the  love  of  God  is 
the  magnetic  pull  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
world  drawing  all  men  unto  him  in  a  restored 
sonship. 

But  harmony  with  God  is  not  a  relation 
which  can  be  achieved  once  for  all  and  forgot¬ 
ten.  You  may  hoist  a  flag  and  nail  it  to  the 
mast  of  your  ship  and  let  it  stay  there  for 
months  without  bothering  about  it.  But  you 
cannot  nail  fast  the  compass  if  you  expect  to 
land  anywhere  except  on  the  rocks.  When  you 
navigate,  your  harmony  wdth  the  heavens  must 
be  recovered  by  fresh  observations  and  experi¬ 
ment  daily. 

It  is  interesting  on  shipboard  to  see  the  old 
process  of  “shooting  the  sun,”  by  wrhich  the 
ship’s  charts  and  clocks  are  checked  up  every 
day  at  noon,  by  taking  a  fresh  observation  of 
the  ship’s  position  with  reference  to  the  sun. 
Yesterday’s  time  was  true  for  yesterday.  It 
may  or  may  not  be  true  for  to-day.  Thus  every 
detail  of  the  ship’s  life  is  brought  into  new 
harmony  with  the  sun.  That  is  a  very  sugges¬ 
tive  process — “Shooting  the  Sun.”  How  long 
since  you  have  done  it?  How  long  since  you 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  51 


have  brought  your  present  course  into  har¬ 
mony  with  heaven  by  a  fresh  observation  of 
the  will  of  God  as  revealed  in  Christ?  The 
largest  cause  of  life’s  shipwrecks  is  that  the 
compass  is  packed  away  in  the  trunk. 

II 

Restored  harmony  means  refound  joy.  And 
how  silently  joy  slips  away  from  us!  Joy  de¬ 
pends  on  harmony  just  as  melody  depends  on 
the  instrument  being  in  tune.  Melody  does 
not  depend  on  things.  The  strings  of  the  piano 
may  all  be  there,  painfully  there,  yet  the  mel¬ 
ody  cannot  be  captured  unless  the  strings  are 
in  right  relation.  So  joy  never  comes  from  the 
mere  possession  of  things.  It  must  come  from 
our  relationships  and  adjustments  to  things 
and  to  people.  That  is  what  makes  joy  dif¬ 
ferent  from  pleasure.  You  can  get  pleasure 
from  things,  from  an  automobile  for  instance. 
But  you  cannot  get  joy  from  a  joyride!  Joy 
may  not  mean  an  unruffled  disposition  of 
happy  calm.  We  have  never  observed  that 
people  with  an  unruffled  disposition  ever 
amounted  to  very  much.  Those  who  are  always 
marked  by  a  calm  like  that  of  a  pool  on  a  quiet 
evening  have  not,  as  a  rule,  contributed  much 


52 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


to  human  welfare.  That  calm  frequently 
springs  from  indifference.  A  great  many  peo¬ 
ple  never  get  worried  about  things  because 
they  do  not  care  very  much  about  them.  Their 
hearts  are  calm  because  they  have  congealed. 
Many  people  never  get  mad  because  they  have 
not  force  enough  in  their  personality.  They 
flatter  themselves  on  keeping  their  temper 
when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  have  very  little 
temper  to  keep.  It  takes  a  real  man  or  woman 
to  get  thoroughly  “mad,”  that  is,  blazingly  in¬ 
dignant  over  injustice  to  and  oppression  of 
other  people! 

The  professional  Pollyanna  is  one  of  the 
most  terrible  bores  on  earth.  We  have  never 
quite  decided  whether  the  female  of  the  species 
is  more  deadly  than  the  male  or  not.  But  both 
are  utterly  tiresome,  as  tiresome  as  the  stereo¬ 
typed  smile  on  the  face  of  a  lifeless  painted 
doll. 

The  joy  which  Christ  gives  and  recovers  is 
deeper  than  the  superficial  conditions  of  life. 
A  man’s  life  may  be  agitated  on  the  surface; 
he  may  be  deeply  concerned  over  many  things ; 
yet  in  the  depths  of  his  heart  and  mind  there 
may  run  deep  currents  of  joy ;  just  as  the  waves 
at  the  top  of  the  sea  may  lash  with  fury  and 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  53 

i 

send  spray  in  every  direction,  yet  down  below 
there  is  a  strong,  serene  running  of  the  tide 
unaffected  by  all  the  agitation  on  the  surface. 

We  let  go  of  our  heritage  of  joy  too  easily. 
We  become  busy  here  and  there  and  worried 
here  and  there,  and  it  is  gone.  We  live  too 
much  on  the  northeast  side  of  our  religion,  ex¬ 
posed  to  the  cold  winds  but  not  facing  the 
tropical  warmth  of  the  presence  of  him  who 
came  that  our  joy  might  be  full. 

To  what  charlatans  people  go  to  recover  the 
joy  which  has  slipped  from  their  lives !  To  the 
beauty  parlors,  as  though  happiness  could  be 
put  on  like  a  coat  of  paint.  Joy  is  like  the 
bloom  of  a  good  complexion.  It  must  always 
be  put  on  from  within;  never  from  without. 
To-day  men  and  women  are  crowding  to  the 
parlors  where  is  dished  out  what  Joseph  Fort 
Newton  calls  “bootleg  religion”;  that  is,  weak 
substitutes  for  the  legitimate  thing  of  Chris¬ 
tianity.  We  rush  to  New  Thought  only  to  dis¬ 
cover  if  we  are  keen  enough  that  what  is  really 
“thought”  is  not  new,  and  what  is  new  is  not 
“thought.”  Crowds  flock  to  the  mediums  and 
to  spirits  that  chirp  and  mutter. 

The  Son  of  man  is  come  to  seek  and  to  save 
your  joy,  to  bring  your  life  into  full  harmony 


54 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


with  him.  The  restoration  of  joy  by  Jesus  is 
a  thoroughgoing  thing.  He  comes  to  our 
hearts  as  to  an  abandoned  garden.  He  does 
not  seek  to  restore  it  by  artificially  tying  on 
fruit  and  flowers  to  the  trees.  He  makes  them 
grow.  He  brings  about  the  conditions  in  life 
out  of  which  joy  comes  as  naturally  and  inev¬ 
itably  as  a  rose  springs  up  out  of  a  well-nur¬ 
tured  and  well-watered  garden. 

In  that  respect  Jesus  differs  profoundly 
from  many  others  who  are  continually  urging 
us  to  “cheer  up.”  Jesus  was  not  any  super¬ 
ficial  organizer  of  an  “International  Smile 
Week,”  after  the  childish  manner  of  many  of 
us  to-day.  Whenever  Jesus  told  men  to  be  of 
good  cheer,  he  always  gave  them  a  reason  for 
rejoicing.  He  says  to  a  helpless  cripple,  “Be 
of  good  cheer.”  Immediately  his  legs  received 
strength  and  he  walked.  He  had  a  reason  to 
feel  cheerful.  That  is  always  the  message  of 
religion.  In  the  loving  purpose  of  God,  in  the 
omnipotence  of  God,  is  the  lasting  reason  for 
courageous  joy.  The  foundation  of  joy  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  Old  Testament  is  the  right  one : 
“The  Lord  God  omnipotent  reigneth,  let  the 
earth  rejoice.”  That  is  enough  to  rejoice  over ! 

WThen  God  enters  a  life  he  plants  a  garden 


THE  INTELLIGENCE  OFFICE  55 


and  tills  it,  and  shines  on  it  with  a  warmth 
which  brings  forth  fruit.  There  is  a  great 
group  of  mountains  and  valleys  in  the  State 
of  Colorado  so  majestic  in  their  grandeur  that 
they  merit  the  name  “The  Garden  of  the  Gods.” 
But  that  garden  cannot  compare  with  a  more 
wonderful  one  in  a  more  wonderful  place  even 
than  Colorado.  Here  is  the  authentic  garden 
of  God— -“The  fruit  of  the  spirit  is  love,  joy, 
peace,  long-suffering,  gentleness,  goodness, 
faith,  meekness,  temperance.” 


IV 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS 

Bring  my  soul  out  of  prison . — Psalm  142.  7. 

OUR  text  touches  the  most  fascinating 
theme  that  has  ever  gripped  the  imagina¬ 
tion  of  man — the  romance  of  escape.  All 
through  the  long  history  of  literature,  all  the 
way  from  the  time  when  Blind  Homer  held  his 
audience  enthralled  as  he  sang  the  hair¬ 
breadth  escapes  of  Ulysses,  down  to  the  days 
when  we  follow  the  exploits  of  Sherlock 
Holmes  with  bated  breath,  the  story  of  an  es¬ 
cape  either  from  jail  or  peril  has  held  the  ea¬ 
ger  interest  of  all  men.  In  these  present  days 
thousands  have  been  thrilled  by  that  almost 
unbelievable  narrative  of  an  escape  from  Rus¬ 
sia  entitled  Beasts ,  Men ,  and  Gods .  It  is  just 
a  plain,  straightforward  narrative  of  a  long 
pilgrimage,  fighting  against  all  the  forces  of 
men  and  nature,  but  it  takes  hold  of  the  ele¬ 
mental  struggle  for  life  within  us  and  stirs 
us  with  a  fresh  admiration  for  the  unexplored 

56 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  57 


powers  of  human  nature.  The  romance  of 
escape  enlists  the  sympathy  of  all  men,  for  it 
is  a  fundamental  epic  theme.  With  breathless 
suspense  we  watch  the  nerve,  the  wit,  the  faith, 
and  endurance  of  one  man  pitted  against  steel 
and  iron,  stone  and  overwhelming  numbers. 

One  of  the  most  moving  pages  in  the  whole 
story  of  the  Civil  War  is  that  which  tells  of 
the  escape  from  Libby  Prison  in  Richmond, 
of  Colonel  Rose  and  one  hundred  and  eight 
other  Union  soldiers.  Tunneling  down  from 
a  fireplace  on  the  second  floor,  through  the 
walls  until  they  came  eight  feet  below  the 
foundation  of  the  building,  another  tunnel  was 
dug  under  the  prison  yard  about  one  hundred 
feet  to  the  outside  of  the  wall.  The  only  tools 
the  men  had  wTere  a  broken  fire  shovel  and 
sharp  pieces  of  wood.  All  the  dirt  had  to  be 
carried  back  through  the  tunnel  in  a  little  fry¬ 
ing  pan  and  the  digging  had  to  be  done  with 
guards  constantly  passing.  To  the  dangers  of 
discovery  were  added  the  horrors  of  an  army 
of  rats.  But  finally  the  men  crawled  through 
the  tunnel  one  by  one  and  passed  within  three 
hundred  feet  of  six  armed  guards,  who,  of 
course,  would  have  shot  them  had  they  been 
discovered.  Then,  even  though  out  of  prison, 


58 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


tliey  were  in  tlie  very  center  of  the  Confederate 
capital,  many  miles  from  the  Union  lines.  At 
last  fifty-five  reached  Washington  in  safety. 

In  our  own  time  one  among  many  such 
stories  is  the  heroic  adventure  of  poor  Pat 
O’Brien  in  that  gripping  book  of  his,  Outwit¬ 
ting  the  Hun.  Captured  by  the  Germans  after 
having  fallen  from  an  aeroplane,  he  was  being 
taken  by  four  guards  on  his  discharge  from 
the  hospital,  to  prison.  Seizing  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  the  distracted  attention  of  the  guards 
in  a  fleeting  moment,  he  flung  himself  head 
foremost  through  a  railroad  car  window  and, 
though  badly  crippled  by  the  fall,  got  up  and 
was  out  of  sight  before  the  train  was  stopped. 
From  then  on  for  ninety  days  he  made  his 
way  through  a  hostile  country,  traveling  only 
at  night,  living  on  roots  and  leaves  for  the 
most  part,  picking  his  way  by  the  stars, 
tempted  a  score  of  times  to  give  up  the  bitter 
struggle,  but  forcing  himself  on  by  an  almost 
superhuman  will.  Finally,  he  reached  the 
border  of  Holland  only  to  find  a  high  impassa¬ 
ble  electrically-charged  wire  barrier.  With 
bruised  and  bleeding  hands  it  took  him  a  whole 
night  to  dig  under  this  barrier.  But  his  long, 
hard  fight  was  won.  With  what  a  depth  of 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  59 


heart  feeling  did  he  make  the  prayer,  oyer  and 
over,  Hiring  my  soul  out  of  prison.” 

In  a  different  and  even  more  difficult  realm, 
what  a  beat  of  the  pulse  the  story  of  Helen 
Keller  brings!  If  you  have  never  read  the 
story  of  her  life,  you  have  a  rare  spiritual  ex¬ 
perience  in  store.  The  story  of  that  battle,  a 
truly  divine  struggle  against  the  iron  bars  of 
blindness  and  deafness,  a  human  spirit  walled 
up  in  an  almost  impassable  stone  stronghold, 
is  one  of  the  great  heroic  sagas  of  the  human 
race. 

An  inseparable  part  of  that  heroic  story  is 
the  genius  and  skilled  sympathy  of  Anne  Sul¬ 
livan  Macy,  who  forged  the  keys  which  let  the 
little  prisoner  out.  Mary  Twain  once  said  that 
the  two  greatest  “men”  of  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury  were  Napoleon  Bonaparte  and  Helen 
Keller.  But  with  all  his  genius,  what  a  comic- 
opera  soldier  Napoleon  makes,  compared  with 
that  heroine  who  battled  with  the  blackest 
darkness  that  ever  settled  on  a  human  soul 
and  overcame  it! 

There  is  a  very  deep  reason  for  the  unfailing 
interest  in  this  romance  of  escape,  for  in  a  real 
sense  it  is  the  story  of  the  human  race  in  its 
struggle  against  jail  doors.  The  long  history 


60 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  man  is  the  story  of  an  escape  from  jail,  over¬ 
coming  the  prison  walls  of  physical  forces,  the 
emancipation  of  the  mind  and  spirit  from  the 
powers  of  ignorance  and  fear  that  inclosed 
them.  Only  in  modern  times  have  we  realized 
what  a  long,  heroic  battle  there  was  between 
powers  of  nature  and  the  dawning  mind  of 
men.  The  deep,  unconscious  prayer  that  un¬ 
derlay  every  endeavor  of  primitive  men  was 
this :  “Bring  my  soul  out  of  prison.”  History 
is  the  divine  answer  of  the  Spirit  of  God  to  the 
spirit  of  man.  Centuries  of  beating  at  jail 
doors  are  expressed  in  William  H.  Carrutli’s 
familiar  eight  lines : 

“A  fire-mist  and  a  planet, 

A  crystal  and  a  cell, 

A  jellyfish  and  a  saurian, 

And  caves  where  the  cave-men  dwell. 

Then  a  sense  of  law  and  beauty, 

A  face  turned  from  the  clod — 

Some  call  it  evolution, 

And  others  call  it  God.”1 

This  deep  prayer  of  the  psalmist,  uttered  in 
a  time  of  distress  and  despair,  when  the  walls 
of  adverse  circumstances  were  steadily  closing 
on  him,  pictures  the  largest  service  which  re- 

1  From  “Each  in  His  Own  Tongue,”  by  William  H.  Carruth.  Courtesy 
of  G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons,  publishers,  New  York  and  London. 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  61 


ligion  can  do  for  men.  It  brings  jail  delivery 
to  the  soul.  By  the  grace  of  God,  the  enter¬ 
prise  of  life  may  be  just  that — a  gripping  hu¬ 
man  and  divine  romance  of  overcoming  prison 
gates  and  walls,  the  liberation  of  the  soul  from 
forces  that  chain  it.  The  highest  experiences 
of  human  life  have  been  of  those  men  and 
women  who  have  had  that  liberation  and  who 
can  make  their  own  a  song  of  thanksgiving  of 
another  psalmist— “Thou  hast  set  my  feet  in 
a  large  room.” 

I 

This  prayer  is  a  cry  from  the  dungeon  of 
our  animal  inheritance.  It  is  a  call  for  free¬ 
dom  from  the  dominion  of  physical  appetite 
and  sin.  Our  physical  constitution  and  in¬ 
stincts  do  not  necessarily  make  a  prison.  They 
are  just  so  much  wonderful  building  material. 
A  pile  of  marble  may  be  built  into  either  a 
home  or  a  jail.  The  divine  plan  is  to  build  our 
physical  being,  with  all  of  its  powers  and  capa¬ 
bilities,  into  a  home  of  the  soul,  lighted  by  a 
divine  spark.  But  men  have  often  discarded 
the  blueprints  of  God  and  have  built  it  into  a 
jail  in  which  the  soul  withers  and  dies  in  a 
dark  cell.  Paul’s  desperate  cry,  “Who  will  de- 


62 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


liver  me  from  the  body  of  death  ?”  is  one  of 
those  great  words  which  one  man  speaks  for 
the  whole  race. 

It  is  the  first  great  step  toward  escape  when 
we  realize  that  the  dominion  of  appetite  is  a 
prison.  For  it  is  frequently  accounted  a  pal¬ 
ace,  a  stately  pleasure  house  as  opulently  fur¬ 
nished  as  that  of  Kubla  Khan,  spread  with 
silks  and  studded  with  jewels.  But  disguise 
the  prison  as  we  may,  it  is  still  a  prison.  In 
our  sunlit  moments  we  realize  it.  Visions  will 
come  to  all  men  like  that  of  Bonnivard,  “The 
Prisoner  of  Chillon,”  who  climbed  one  day  to 
the  top  of  his  prison  tower  and  looked  out  on 
the  living  green,  the  blue  of  the  lake  and  the 
white  summits  of  the  mountains.  So  our  mo¬ 
ments  of  clear  vision  are  the  top  of  the  prison 
tower  from  which  we  look  out  on  a  spiritual 
quality  of  life  and  know  it  as  the  soul?s  true 
country. 

Sometimes  men  are  thrown  in  jail  by  a  sud¬ 
den  arrest,  by  a  sudden  temptation  which 
swoops  down  on  them  like  a  hawk.  More  often 
their  prison  house  is  the  slow  building  of  a 
forbidding  barrier — habit. 

Habits  of  thought  which  make  new  excuses 
for  old  sius  forge  new  bars  for  the  prison  of 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  63 


the  dominion  of  the  flesh.  New  shackles  are 
being  forged  for  a  large  number  of  people  in 
the  present  popularity  of  the  cult  of  “freedom 
from  cramping  custom  and  outgrown  moral¬ 
ity.”  It  is  a  strange  irony  that  every  so-called 
“new  freedom”  from  inconvenient  moral  re¬ 
straints  means  the  welding  of  a  new  chain,  a 
strengthening  of  the  bars  which  hold  the  soul 
in  subjection. 

An  easy  and  superficial  view  of  God  which 
is  nothing  more  than  a  sentimental  caricature 
makes  the  descent  into  license  easy.  The  real 
theology  of  large  numbers  to-day  is  well  ex¬ 
pressed  by  Omar  Khayyam : 

.  .  .  “Some  there  are  who  tell 
Of  one  who  threatens  he  will  toss  to  Hell 

The  luckless  Pots  he  marred  in  making — Pish! 
He’s  a  Good  Fellow,  and  ’twill  all  be  well.” 

Not  all  convicts  are  profligates  by  any 
means.  Many  are  simply  in  prison  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  creatures  of  the  senses.  They  de¬ 
pend  absolutely  on  what  they  can  eat  and 
drink  and  see  and  hear  for  the  whole  of  life. 
Their  spiritual  faculties  are  atrophied. 

H.  G.  Wells  has  summed  up  this  large  class 
of  people  with  a  very  expressive  name  when  he 


64 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


calls  them  the  “God-sakers,”  meaning  the  peo¬ 
ple  who  are  always  exclaiming,  “For  God’s 
sake,  let’s  do  something !”  When  they  are  not 
going  somewhere  or  coming  back  from  some¬ 
where,  or  doing  something,  life  is  an  empty  and 
aching  blank.  Without  resources  in  themselves 
they  are  dependent  on  the  gratification  of  some 
one  of  the  senses.  It  never  occurs  to  them  that 
life  may  have  any  deeper  resources  of  enjoy¬ 
ment. 

So  far  we  have  been  thinking  merely  of  the 
plight  of  the  human  spirit.  But  the  chief  point 
of  interest  in  the  story  of  an  escape  is  the 
escape .  And  that  is  the  chief  point  of  interest 
in  the  story  as  God  writes  it. 

Paul  answers  his  own  question,  “Who  will 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  death?”  His  tri¬ 
umphant  answer  is,  “I  thank  God,  through 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.”  Peter’s  escape  from 
jail  affords  us  a  very  true  picture  of  the  means 
of  escape  of  the  human  spirit  from  the  do¬ 
minion  of  the  flesh.  An  angel  came  and  let 
him  out.  That  is  always  God’s  method.  The 
first  thing  that  was  necessary  was  the  angel  to 
awaken  him.  The  first  step  in  our  escape  from 
appetite  is  the  awakening  of  conscience,  an 
inspiration  at  the  awakening  touch  of  the 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  65 


Spirit  of  God.  After  the  awakening  came  the 
cooperation  of  the  angel  and  the  man,  and  soon 
he  w^as  on  the  street.  It  is  by  the  cooperation 
of  our  will  with  the  energizing,  empowering 
Spirit  of  God  that  we  vault  over  the  wall,  con¬ 
quering  the  guard  set  to  watch  us,  and  leap  on 
our  way  to  freedom. 

In  these  days  when  we  are  so  much  occupied, 
as  we  should  be,  with  social  vision,  with  the 
preaching  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  social 
ideal,  there  is  danger  that  we  may  slur  over  a 
fundamental  message  of  the  gospel : 

“He  breaks  the  power  of  cancelled  sin, 

He  sets  the  prisoner  free.” 

Those  lines  of  the  old  hymn  are  a  romance 
of  escape,  but  they  are  no  fiction. 

To  everyone  fighting  temptation  this  is, 
thank  God,  in  the  stark,  literal  meaning  of  the 
much-abused  phrase,  “gospel  truth.”  There 
follow  in  the  train  of  Christ,  as  the  exalted 
language  of  the  Te  Deum  portrays  it,  the 
glorious  company  of  apostles,  prophets,  saints 
and  martyrs  lifting  their  chorus  of  praise. 
But  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  there  also  fol¬ 
low  in  his  train  a  great  and  glorious  company 
of  escaped  convicts.  Vachel  Lindsay  was  not 


66 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


mad  but  speaks  forth  the  words  of  truth  and 
soberness  when  he  describes  one  part  of  that 
company  in  his  “General  William  Booth  En¬ 
ters  Heaven.” 

“Booth  led  boldly  with  his  big  bass  drum, 

‘Are  you  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb?’ 

The  saints  smiled  gravely  and  they  said,  ‘He’s  come.’ 
‘Are  you  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb?’ 

•  ••••••*# 

Walking  lepers  followed  rank  on  rank, 

Lurching  bravos  from  the  ditches  dank; 

Drabs  from  the  alley  and  drug-fiends  pale, 

Minds  still  passion-ridden,  soul-powers  frail! 
Vermin-eaten  saints  with  moldy  breath, 

Unwashed  legions  with  the  ways  of  death. 

...  It  was  queer  to  see 

Bull-necked  convicts  with  that  land  made  free, 

.  .  .  drabs  and  vixens  in  a  flash  made  whole. 

Gone  was  the  weasel  head,  the  snout,  the  jowl, 
Sages  and  sibyls  now  and  athletes  clean, 

Rulers  of  empires  and  of  forests  green.”2 


That  language  is  not  too  strong  a  picture  of 
the  enabling  grace  of  God.  The  Divine  Love 
laughs  at  locksmiths. 

I  have  missed  most  of  the  sights  on  this  earth 
that  men  call  great.  I  have  never  seen  the  Mat¬ 
terhorn  nor  the  Taj  Mahal.  I  have  never  even 
seen  the  Yellowstone  nor  the'Yosemite.  But  I 


2  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The  Macmillan  Company. 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  67 


have  seen  the  first  wonder  of  the  world,  the 
fairest  sight  earth  holds  up  to  heaven.  I  have 
seen  God  lead  men  out  of  jail. 

II 

Every  soul  must  break  out  of  a  prison  of 
things .  We  are  dungeoned  by  possessions, 
smothered  by  a  cutter  of  merchandise,  the  life 
flattened  out  by  the  accumulative  instinct  of 
selfishness.  The  prisonhouse  of  selfishness  is 
the  common  jail  of  mankind,  caging  men  in 
the  little  cell  of  personal  advantage. 

There  recently  died  in  the  village  of  New 
Hartford,  Connecticut,  an  elderly  man  of 
wealth  who  was  born  and  lived  all  his  life  in 
the  same  room  in  which  he  died.  The  news¬ 
paper  account  of  his  death  stated  that  he  had 
never  slept  in  any  other  room  and  always  had 
a  great  dislike  to  making  any  changes  and 
grew  angry  when  a  new  wallpaper  or  a  new 
carpet  was  suggested.  However  broad  may 
have  been  his  interests,  his  actual  physical  life 
was  spent  in  a  one-celled  universe.  That  life 
in  a  single  room  is  a  fair  picture  of  the  walled- 
up  life  of  millions  within  the  cage  of  selfish 
absorption ;  their  contented,  chained  souls 


68 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


pace  up  and  down  as  restlessly  and  uselessly  as 
a  grizzly  bear  doing  his  endless  march  behind 
the  bars  of  his  cage  in  the  zoo.  Frequently 
selfish  lives  are  not  a  parade  up  and  down  one 
cell  only,  but  before  a  tier  of  adjoining  cells. 
Their  interest  bulges  out  to  take  in  other  mem¬ 
bers  of  their  family,  their  relatives,  and  even 
the  neighbors  as  far  as  three  blocks  in  all  di¬ 
rections. 

Now,  of  course,  it  is  perilously  easy  to  in¬ 
veigh  against  selfishness,  and  much  exhorta¬ 
tion  against  it  is  vague  and  confusing.  We 
cannot  live  on  earth  as  disembodied  spirits. 
We  must  have  things.  It  is  one  evidence  of 
the  sanity  of  Jesus  that  he  always  realized  that 
“Your  heavenly  father  knoweth  ye  have  need 
of  these  things.”  More  than  that,  even  with 
the  most  unselfish  of  motives,  unless  we  ap¬ 
proach  life  with  a  definite  equipment,  with 
some  skill  and  some  means  of  service,  our  con¬ 
tribution  will  be  fragmentary  and  weak.  We 
need  a  self-regard  which  will  equip  and  sus¬ 
tain  us  for  worth-while  service.  But  that  does 
not  mean  the  absorption  of  our  whole  time  and 
strength  and  money  in  that  task.  Our  home, 
our  business,  our  personal  interests  ought  to 
be  a  haven  from  which  we  start  equipped  for  a 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  69 


cruise  of  service,  not  a  drydock  in  which  we  are 
interned  for  the  duration  of  life. 

What  a  wastage  of  life  there  is  when  the 
shades  of  the  prison  house  of  selfishness  de¬ 
scend  and  the  vision  splendid  is  shut  from 
view!  The  magnificence  of  the  jail  does  not 
affect  the  tragedy  of  confinement.  Last  sum¬ 
mer  the  attention  of  the  country  was  fixed  for 
thirty  days  on  a  gold  mine  in  Jackson,  Cali¬ 
fornia,  in  which  forty-seven  miners  were  en¬ 
tombed.  Every  effort  possible  was  made  to 
dig  them  out  before  death  overtook  them,  but 
when  finally  the  rescuers  tunneled  a  way  to 
them  they  were  all  dead.  There  they  were  shut 
up  in  one  of  the  richest  rooms  in  the  world, 
with  the  walls  and  floor  and  ceiling  literally 
lined  with  gold !  Their  prison  house  was  worth 
millions;  yet  in  it  they  gasped  their  lives 
away ! 

That  tragedy  has  a  close  parallel  in  the 
spiritual  world,  where  the  life  of  the  soul  has 
been  snuffed  out  in  a  gold  mine.  Nor  does  it 
take  the  fabulous  wealth  of  a  gold  mine  to  hold 
the  soul  a  prisoner.  A  man’s  soul  may  be  just 
as  irretrievably  lost  among  the  cracker  barrels 
of  a  corner  grocery  store.  Two  recent  satirists, 
in  a  remarkable  volume  entitled  The  Undertake 


70 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


er’s  Garland ,  have  described  the  spiritual 
famine  in  which  many  are  starved  to  death.  A 
business  man  is  etched  as  follows: 

His  purpose  in  his  barren  existence  of  severity  and 
application,  in  ignoring  alike  the  questioning  mind  and 
the  flaming  imagination,  was  simply  to  make  something 
cheap  and  sell  it  to  somebody  dear — a  pasteboard  suit¬ 
case,  an  alfalfa  cigarette,  a  paraffin  chocolate  bar.  And 
to  this  end  he  set  thousands  of  his  fellows  to  the  most 
monotonous  and  exhausting  labor. 

The  great  emphasis  of  Jesus  as  he  sought  to 
lead  men  out  of  jail  into  freedom  was  that  life 
was  more  than  meat.  That  great  truth  can  be 
heard  through  his  discourses  like  the  constant 
roll  of  the  sea.  We  hear  it  in  the  parable  of  the 
rich  fool,  in  the  story  of  the  rich  young  ruler, 
in  the  parable  of  the  talents,  and  the  good  seed 
choked  by  thorns.  That  familiar  teaching 
should  echo  and  reecho  to-day  above  the  noise 
of  the  market-place. 

We  frequently  hear  church  workers  speak 
of  the  ministry  of  the  church  to  “shut-ins.” 
We  have  been  speaking  here  of  a  very  pa¬ 
thetic  class  of  “shut-ins”  who  need  a  vigor¬ 
ous  ministry.  They  are  not  dear  old  la¬ 
dies  or  patient  invalids  who  never  get  out 
of  the  house.  They  are  the  prison  inmates  who 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  71 


have  built  their  own  dungeons  by  their  selfish 
absorption.  The  business  of  the  church  is  not 
to  give  them  glasses  of  jelly,  or  smooth  words, 
or  comforting  prayers,  or  any  other  kind  of 
flattering  attention.  The  church  has  done  far 
too  much  of  that  sort  of  thing.  Far  less  often 
than  we  should  have  we  declared  in  plain 
words  to  the  selfish  and  respectable  people 
around  us :  “You  are  locked  up  in  jail.  Your 
spirit  is  in  prison.  In  Christ’s  name,  come 
out!”  Such  spirits  in  prison  need  the  strong 
words  of  the  Lord  to  break  in  the  doors  of  their 
selfish  exclusion  and  let  them  out  into  a  share 
of  the  vision  and  the  service  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Hear  the  word  of  the  Lord  for  this  year  of 
grace,  1923,  as  it  comes  through  the  mouth  of 
his  prophet,  Herman  Hagedorn: 

“Ah,  what  a  web 

Of  gray  inconsequential-seeming  threads! 

Of  modish  thoughts,  the  meat  and  money  thoughts — 

In  webs,  in  webs,  in  iron  curtains  proof 

Against  whatever  fires  of  poesy 

Burn  in  white  aspirations  from  our  lives. 

They  hang  between  us  and  your  inner  eyes. 

Those  better  eyes,  the  pure  eyes  of  the  soul. 

“Lift  up  the  curtain:  For  an  hour  lift  up 
The  veil  that  holds  you  prisoners  in  this  world 
Of  coins  and  wines  and  motor-horns,  this  world 


72 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Of  figures  and  of  men  who  trust  in  facts. 

This  pitiable,  hypocritical  world 

Where  men  with  blinded  eyes  and  hobbled  feet 

Grope  down  a  narrow  gorge  and  call  it  life.”3 

This  is  particularly  a  gospel  to  women.  We 
do  not  imply  that  women  are  more  selfish  than 
men.  Indeed,  we  should  he  prepared  to  con¬ 
tend  for  the  very  opposite  of  that  proposition 
to  the  end  of  time  against  all  comers.  The  un¬ 
selfish  sacrifice  of  women  has  won  for  the 
world  a  large  part  of  the  blessings  and  the 
beauty  which  it  enjoys.  But  women  are  pe¬ 
culiarly  exposed  to  arrest  by  little  concerns 
and  selfish  interests,  so  that  without  realizing 
what  is  happening  to  them  they  become  the  in¬ 
mates  of  one  little  jail  room.  Family,  clothes, 
the  butcher,  the  baker,  the  candlestick-maker 
— these  so  easily  became  their  whole  world. 
And  as  necessary  as  those  things  are,  they  are 
not  a  big  enough  field  for  the  energies  of  an  im¬ 
mortal  spirit.  There  is  need  for  the  art  of  effi¬ 
cient  housekeeping  not  merely  in  the  details  of 
a  six-room  flat  or  a  ten-room  house,  but  in  the 
details  of  a  city,  a  state  and  government. 

Women  must  take  the  qualities  of  a  home- 

-  t 

3  From  “The  Heart  of  Youth.”  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Herman 
Hagedorn. 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  73 


maker  into  the  larger  sphere  of  the  common 
life  and  welfare.  Margaret  Widdemer,  in  lines 
of  great  beauty,  has  pictured  that  need  and 
women’s  necessary  response  to  it: 

“I  who  labored  beside  my  mate  when  the  work  of  the 
world  began, 

The  watch  I  kept  while  my  children  slept 

I  will  keep  to-day  by  man. 

I  have  crouched  too  long  at  the  little  hearths  at  the 
bidding  of  man  my  mate; 

I  go  to  kindle  the  hearth  of  the  world  that  man  has 
left  desolate.”4 

There  are  two  secret  passages  out  of  the  jail 
of  selfishness.  We  call  them  secret,  but  they 
are  the  great  open  secrets  of  Jesus.  They  are 
a  sense  of  the  spiritual  values  of  life  and  a 
sense  of  stewardship.  The  two  are  really  one 
passage-way.  They  are  open  to  all.  We  find 
the  way  of  escape  in  the  words  of  Jesus,  “Seek 
ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God.”  We  find  it  in 
the  prayer  he  taught  us,  “Our  Father — thy 
kingdom  come.” 

In  the  Epistle  of  Peter  there  is  a  statement 
of  haunting  suggestiveness  that  J  esus 
“preached  to  the  spirits  in  prison.”  Just 

*  From  “The  Factories  with  Other  Lyrics.”  Reprinted  by  permission 
of  John  C.  Winston  Co. 


74 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


what  that  means  we  do  not  know.  The  words 
lend  themselves  to  a  multitude  of  fancies.  But 
this  we  do  know,  that  Jesus  preaches  to  “the 
spirits  in  prison”  to-day  and  brings  this  great 
word  of  hope  from  a  heart  full  of  love :  “If  the 
Son  therefore  shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be 
free  indeed.” 

“Self  is  the  only  prison  that  can  ever  bind  the  soul, 
Love  is  the  only  angel  who  can  bid  the  gates  unroll; 
And  when  he  comes  to  call  thee,  arise  and  follow  fast; 
His  way  may  lie  through  darkness,  but  it  leads  to  light 
at  last.”5 6 

Ill 

Strong  jails  can  be  made  out  of  very  delicate 
and  filmy  things — thoughts. 

“Stone  walls  do  not  a  prison  make. 

Nor  iron  bars  a  cage,” 

but  thoughts  frequently  do.  A  closed  mind 
may  be  as  terrible  solitary  confinement  as  the 
county  jail.  Men  make  out  of  their  cherished 
prejudices  and  cozy  and  finished  dogmatisms 
a  cell  of  extremely  small  size  and  dark,  in 
which  their  minds  are  fed  on  the  restricted 
fare  of  bread  and  water. 

5  From  Poems  of  Henry  Van  Dyke .  Copyright,  1911-1920.  Charles 

Scribner’s  Sons. 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  LOCKSMITHS  75 


In  Edgar  Allan  Poe’s  haunting  story  of  hor¬ 
ror,  The  Cask  of  Amontillado ,  he  tells  of  the 
revenge  taken  by  a  man  against  an  enemy. 
This  enemy  was  invited  down  into  the  wine 
cellar  and  told  to  step  into  a  narrow,  circular- 
shaped  closet  and  select  a  bottle  of  fine  wine. 
When  he  stepped  within,  the  opening  was  im¬ 
mediately  sealed  up  and  the  man  was  left  to 
perish  there.  Many  a  man  unconsciously  gives 
the  same  brutal  treatment  to  his  mind.  We 
allow  our  minds  to  be  hemmed  in  by  prejudices 
which  shut  out  the  light  and  air,  and  the  terri¬ 
ble  revenge  which  nature  always  takes  on  the 
closed  mind  is  that  the  mind  dies.  Race  preju¬ 
dices,  national  and  class  prejudices  are  prisons 
in  which  all  sorts  of  deadly  vermin  breed.  We 
so  easily  get  shut  up  to  our  own  particular 
view  of  things.  Many  churchmen  are  glad  to 
hear  the  gospel  as  long  as  it  does  not  touch 
them  uncomfortably.  They  stand  guard  over 
their  beliefs  and  over  their  habits,  and  their 
attitude  shouts  out  in  the  face  of  the  Almighty, 
“Thus  far  and  no  farther  shalt  thou  come!” 
There  is  a  present-day  group  of  people  who  cor¬ 
respond  to  those  who  in  the  days  before  the 
Civil  War  would  always  rise  in  the  church  and 
stump  loudly  down  the  aisle  to  the  door  when- 


76 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


ever  the  subject  of  slavery  was  introduced  by 
the  preacher.  There  was  no  opening  into  their 
minds  for  any  definite  light  on  the  subject.  To¬ 
day,  of  course,  it  is  not  slavery,  but  it  may  be 
any  one  of  a  dozen  other  things  in  regard  to 
which  we  are  unwilling  to  keep  an  open  mind, 
and  by  so  much  we  shut  ourselves  up  in  a  little 
space,  when  God  meant  us  to  have  freedom  of 
large  charity  and  understanding. 

J esus  came  to  preach  deliverance  to  the  cap¬ 
tives.  Have  you  had  life’s  great  adventure — 
its  romance  of  escape?  Outside  the  barred 
gates — waiting — “the  Master  is  come  and 
calleth  for  thee.” 


Y 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES 

And  this  I  pray ,  that  your  love  may  abound 
yet  more  and  more  in  knowledge  and  in  all 
judgment;  that  ye  may  approve  things  that  are 
excellent . — Philippians  1.  9-10. 

WHAT  a  rare  gift  Paul  was  praying  that 
his  friends  in  Philippi  might  have — the 
ability  to  distinguish  the  things  that  differ! 
It  is  a  far  better  thing  than  common  eyesight. 
They  had  that.  Uncommon  insight  was  the 
gift  he  craved  for  them. 

The  detection  of  differences  is  the  beginning 
of  all  orderly  mental  power.  It  is  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  all  science.  It  marks  the  contrast  be¬ 
tween  the  report  of  the  natural  world  given  by 
a  man  who  can  usually  tell  the  wild  flowers 
from  birds,  but  cannot  go  much  further,  and 
that  of  the  botanist  or  zoologist  wTho  knows 
intimately  the  hundreds  of  varieties  of  each. 
Only  with  the  greatest  slowness  extending  over 
the  centuries  in  the  upward  progress  of  man 

77 


78 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


did  the  accurate  observance  of  the  different 
characteristics  of  natural  events  develop, 
which  enabled  men  to  discover  their  true  cause 
and  thus  make  possible  science  and  philosophy. 
Medical  and  scientific  research  to-day  is  care¬ 
fully  and  painfully  threading  its  way  along 
the  same  path,  with  minute  care  examining 
hundreds  of  closely  related  specimens  and 
cases  so  that  a  true  law  or  principle  may  be 
discovered. 

The  highest  mental  power  everywhere  has 
as  an  essential  element  this  ability  of  testing 
the  things  that  differ.  In  literature,  whether 
on  the  creative  or  the  critical  side,  it  is  the 
faculty  of  separating  the  essential  from  the 
accidental,  the  significant  from  the  trivial,  the 
timeless  from  the  ephemeral,  which  marks  the 
mind  of  the  first  quality.  So  progress  in  the 
ethical,  moral,  and  spiritual  world  depends  on 
the  discernment  of  the  moral  quality  of  an 
action,  the  sure  recognition  of  vital  differences 
in  motive  and  consequences  between  possible 
attitudes  and  deeds. 

So  much  of  our  life  is  passed  in  mental  con¬ 
fusion,  steering  through  a  mist  or  fog.  Pro¬ 
fessor  William  James  savs  that  an  infant’s 

t / 

first  mental  operation  is  the  feeling — “thin- 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  79 


gumbob  again.”  That  is  about  as  accurate  a 
mental  observation  as  we  often  make  in  the 
practical  affairs  of  life.  One  thing  seems  to 
have  some  resemblance  to  another,  so  we  check 
off  the  identification — “thingumbob  again” — 
and  act  accordingly,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  is  probably  not  “thingumbob”  at  all ! 

This  was  a  penetrating  and  timely  prayer 
when  Paul  made  it.  Here  was  a  little  group  of 
people  moving  out  in  the  world  of  moral  and 
spiritual  endeavor  infinitely  different  from  the 
way  of  life  of  their  neighbors.  They  had  em¬ 
braced  a  faith  new  in  motive  and  conduct. 
This  new  faith  was  set  against  the  background 
of  their  previous  religious  ideas  and  practices, 
and  against  the  background  of  the  hardness 
and  immorality  of  contemporary  social  life. 
Love  itself  was  not  a  sufficient  guide  through 
such  a  tangled  moral  wilderness.  Unless  love 
abounded  in  knowledge  and  discernment  which 
could  detect  with  the  accuracy  of  a  magnetic 
needle  the  difference  between  the  carnal  and 
the  spiritual,  the  spurious  and  the  genuine, 
the  great  and  the  small,  they  would  soon  lose 
themselves. 

With  great  timeliness  this  noble  prayer 
sounds  in  our  ears  as  it  reaches  over  the  cen- 


80 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


turies — to  distinguish  things  that  differ ! 
There  are  so  many  things  to  distinguish  be¬ 
tween  to-day !  Never  did  the  world  spread  out 
such  a  glittering  array  of  things  as  before  our 
generation.  And  life  is  just  this  “terrible 
choice.”  It  is  small  wonder  that  with  so  much 
confusion  and  so  little  of  any  real  standards  of 
judgment  present  in  their  minds  so  many  peo¬ 
ple  make  life  choices  which  are  at  once  tragic 
and  ridiculous.  Many  careers  are  pathetically 
like  a  trip  through  a  great  department  store 
made  by  a  man  who  might  take  anything  he 
wished,  and  who  emerges  clutching  a  paste  dia¬ 
mond  worth  thirty  cents ! 

In  one  aspect  of  present-day  life,  in  particu¬ 
lar,  is  the  power  of  testing  the  things  which 
differ  desperately  needed.  Never  was  the  art 
of  imitation  and  substitution  carried  to  such  a 
high  pitch.  It  is  true  in  the  material  world 
and  equally  true  in  the  moral  and  spiritual 
world.  A  large  part  of  our  industrial  art  to¬ 
day  is  the  art  of  substitution ,  the  manufactur¬ 
ing  of  imitations  so  clever  as  to  defy  detection 
by  the  untrained  eye.  The  cheap  is  substituted 
for  the  expensive,  the  new  for  the  old,  the  weak 
for  the  strong.  A  disillusioned  man  confessed 
recently  that  he  would  never  again  buy  a 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  81 


leather-bound  book  unless  he  could  chew  the 
cover  first,  and  even  then  he  could  not  be  sure ! 
We  build  homes  of  imitation  stone  made  of 
plaster,  and  fill  them  up  with  furniture  painted 
to  look  like  mahogany ;  then  we  cover  the  fur¬ 
niture  with  a  paper  substitute  for  leather. 
Much  of  our  clothing  is  of  imitation  material 
“just  as  good  as  wool.”  The  imitation  jewelry 
business  has  come  to  be  a  great  industry  of  na¬ 
tional  proportions.  We  have  synthetic  dia¬ 
monds,  and  a  hundred  varieties  of  “pearls,”  of 
which  even  the  best  imitations  are  themselves 
imitated.  We  have  “white”  gold  and  “green” 
gold  and  many  other  colors  of  “almost”  gold. 
Fabric  furs  which  grow  on  machines  are  pass¬ 
able  substitutes  for  the  old-fashioned  variety 
which  grew  on  animals.  Glucose  for  sugar, 
oleomargarine  for  butter,  cottonseed  for  olive 
oil  are  only  a  few  ornaments  of  the  dining 
table  in  an  age  of  substitutes.  In  the  feminine 
world  of  substitution  substituted  complexions 
and  golden  locks  and  similar  mysteries  are  a 
Blue  Beard’s  closet  which  we  do  not  dare  to 
explore. 

But  these  substitutes  are,  after  all,  only  on 
the  surface  of  life.  It  is  with  the  fraud  in 
deeper  realms — the  ready  substitution  of  cheap 


82 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


imitations  of  genuine  ethical  and  spiritual 
values — that  the  disastrous  deterioration  in 
the  quality  of  life  comes.  Our  social  life  is 
filled  with  deceptive  imitations  of  genuine  vir¬ 
tues  and  powers,  so  that  our  present  civiliza¬ 
tion  glitters  like  the  window  of  a  five-and-ten- 
cent  store,  full  of  cheap  models  of  genuine 
treasures. 

The  familiar  words,  “accept  no  substitutes,” 
might  well  serve  as  a  guide  by  which  to  thread 
our  way  amid  the  bewildering  moral  confusion 
of  our  time.  Let  us  set  up  a  white  guidepost 
with  these  large  letters  of  warning — “Accept 
No  Substitutes” — on  three  busy  highways  of 
life.  Many  of  the  most  dangerous  substitutions 
occur  where  the  names  of  the  two  things  con¬ 
fused  sound  very  much  alike.  And  there  the  re¬ 
semblance  ceases.  They  are  fundamentally  dif¬ 
ferent,  and  to  act  as  though  one  could  replace 
the  other  is  to  plunge  life  into  moral  chaos. 

I 

A  common  blunder  of  our  time  is  to  substi¬ 
tute  a  sense  of  humor  for  a  sense  of  honor . 
These  two  are  so  different  that  to  join  them  in 
any  way  sounds  fantastic  and  a  far-fetched, 
ridiculous  straining  after  alliteration.  Do  not 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  83 


blame  the  preacher  for  it.  That  strange  con¬ 
fusion  is  a  commonplace  of  present-day  life. 
When  a  person  has  lost  a  fine  sense  of  honor,  in 
the  place  of  the  high  and  sensitive  idealism 
which  ought  to  dominate  all  of  one’s  action, 
there  frequently  sits  a  cynical  spirit  of  amused 
indifference,  with  keen  eye  for  the  humorous 
aspects  of  life,  eager  for  superficial  entertain¬ 
ment,  but  blind  to  its  great  moral  obligations. 
Such  a  substitution  is  like  dismissing  the  pilot 
from  the  helm  of  a  ship  and  putting  a  monkey 
in  his  place.  Seamanship  gives  way  to  a  car¬ 
nival  of  monkey  business.  That  is  exactly 
what  has  happened  in  the  navigation  of  a  great 
many  lives  to-day. 

A  clear  picture  of  this  inglorious  substitu¬ 
tion  is  found  in  the  cheap  ridicule  of  the  Puri¬ 
tan  which  prevails  among  large  sections  of  our 
population.  The  well-known  figure  of  the  Puri¬ 
tan  does  not  stir  any  feeling  of  reverence;  it 
does  not  arouse  any  grateful  recognition  of  his 
historical  service.  It  arouses  only  a  gesture  of 
contempt.  The  sophisticated  and  emancipated 
intellectuals  of  our  time  do  not  recognize  that 
the  Puritan  is  one  of  the  noble,  even  though 
at  times  tragic,  figures  in  history.  They  regard 
him  as  a  comic  figure.  The  Puritan  appeals 


84 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


to  the  sense  of  humor.  The  cheap  wit  of  to-day 
leveled  at  the  Puritan  expresses  that  distorted 
sense  of  humor  which  regards  life  as  so  much 
material  for  entertainment  and  jest.  It  is 
hardly  a  mental  condition  to  be  proud  of  when 
a  high  sense  of  honor  and  a  feeling  for  the  se¬ 
riousness  of  life  is  something  so  quaint  and  so 
ridiculous  to  call  forth  no  emotion  but  amuse¬ 
ment. 

We  do  not  need  to  say,  surely,  that  we  hold 
no  indictment  against  humor.  It  is  one  of  the 
pillars  of  the  Temple  of  God.  It  is  a  means 
of  grace  which  might  have  prevented  literally 
millions  of  tragedies,  big  and  little,  had  it  been 
allowed  to  get  in  its  redemptive  work.  Humor 
keeps  the  mind  sane  and  the  spirit  humble. 
It  keeps  faith  balanced.  It  sets  forth  the  grace 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  a  manner  impos¬ 
sible  without  it. 

The  sense  of  humor  deserves  a  place  on 
board  the  ship  in  the  “passenger  list,”  but  it 
is  no  substitute  for  the  pilot.  To-day  we  see 
the  wide  prevalence  of  a  spirit  to  which  en¬ 
thusiasm,  true  faith,  and  high  hopes  seem 
childish.  Wit  and  mockery  take  the  place  of 
zeal,  and  this  pitiful  substitution  strikes  those 
who  have  made  it  as  a  great  intellectual  ad- 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  85 


vance.  Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby  said,  “I  be¬ 
lieve  that  ‘nil  admirari ’  is  the  devil’s  favorite 
text.”  Certainly  the  cynical  air  of  disil¬ 
lusioned  amusement  at  the  world  is  one  of  the 
most  diseased  mental  states  into  which  a  per¬ 
son  may  fall,  although  it  frequently  appears  to 
be  shrewd  and  is  felt  to  be  stimulating  to  one’s 
observation  of  human  character. 

Quite  a  section  of  current  literature  might 
be  described  under  the  title  of  one  characteris¬ 
tic  book,  Tales  of  the  Jazz  Age.  Moral  prin¬ 
ciples  among  the  heroines  and  heroes  of  such 
tales  are  an  encumbrance.  The  correct  thing 
is  an  air  of  sophisticated  cleverness  and  sar¬ 
castic  flippancy.  In  great  fiction  sex  was  al¬ 
ways  approached  with  a  sense  of  honor.  It  is 
fashionable  to-day  to  approach  it  with  a  sense 
of  humor,  as  a  plaything  taken  at  its  entertain¬ 
ment  value.  And  what  happens  in  fiction  hap¬ 
pens  in  life. 

Multitudes  are  flatting  the  high  notes  in 
the  song  of  life.  The  upper  register  of  its  high 
ideals  of  duty  and  obligation  and  honor  is  not 
sounded  truly.  The  treble  clef  is  astray.  And 
without  that  treble  clef  life  is  a  discordant 
blare. 

The  warden  of  Sing  Sing  penitentiary  re- 


86 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


cently  entertained  with  moving  pictures 
twenty-three  condemned  prisoners  in  the 
“death  house.”  He  told  the  producer  from 
whom  he  got  the  film  that  “he  needed  some¬ 
thing  awfully  funny }  as  the  men  were  soon  to 
die!”  It  must  have  been  a  ghastly  entertain¬ 
ment — in  the  presence  of  the  great  question  of 
eternity  to  be  trying  to  divert  the  mind  and 
heart  with  the  unspeakably  sad  amusement  of 
the  average  comic  film!  That  desperate  at¬ 
tempt  to  inject  comedy  into  life  is  a  fair  pic¬ 
ture  of  thousands  to-day  who  shut  out  the  no¬ 
ble  and  the  serious  from  life  and  jam  it  so  full 
of  the  amusing  as  to  leave  no  room  for  any¬ 
thing  else. 

One  of  the  keenest  humorists  in  America, 
himself  a  rare  artist  in  the  cap  and  bells,  Don 
Marquis,  says  with  great  penetration :  “To 
traffic  with  nothing  whatever  but  small  quips 
and  wheezes,  scores  of  them,  hundreds  of  them, 
tens  of  thousands  of  them  as  the  years  stretch 
on,  with  strained  cleverness  and  nothing  else 
whatever,  would  be  a  most  intolerable  and  ex¬ 
quisite  agony  of  hell!”  What  a  suggestive 
phrase  he  has  given  us — “to  traffic  in  quips  and 
wheezes” !  It  is  a  description  of  many  an  in¬ 
significant  life,  giggling  itself  away  to  extinc- 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  87 


tion.  How  pathetic  such  a  picture  is  when  set 
against  such  a  life  motto  as  that  which  is 
carved  on  the  tomb  of  Mary  Lyon ! — “There  is 
nothing  in  the  universe  that  I  fear  but  that  I 
shall  not  know  my  duty  or  shall  fail  to  do  it.” 
When  that  spirit  of  Mary  Lyon  drops  out  of 
life  it  is  as  though  the  sun  dropped  out  of  the 
sky.  To  exchange  a  sense  of  honor  for  a  love 
of  amusement  is  like  exchanging  Macbeth  for 
Joe  Miller’s  Joke  Book ,  exchanging  the  “Mes¬ 
siah”  for  a  ragtime  phonograph  record,  ex¬ 
changing  the  New  Testament  for  the  comic 
supplement  of  the  Sunday  newspaper. 

II 

Science  is  substituted  for  conscience .  The 
words  look  almost  alike.  There  is  just  the 
trifling  difference  that  “conscience”  has  an  ad¬ 
ditional  little  syllable.  And  it  is,  no  doubt,  a 
natural  characteristic  of  a  scientific  age  that 
it  should  regard  science  as  a  more  than  ade¬ 
quate  substitute  for  conscience.  With  the  ad¬ 
vent  of  science  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  astrol¬ 
ogy,  and  fairies  has  retired.  Why  not  retire 
conscience  as  well,  with  its  quaint  suggestion 
of  a  supernatural  voice?  It  was  uncertain  and 
sort  of  “creepy”  at  times.  Science  with  its  ex- 


88 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


actness,  its  sureness,  above  all,  with  its  com¬ 
mon-sense  reality,  with  no  supernatural  non¬ 
sense  about  it,  looks  like  a  modern  substitute 
vastly  better.  So,  conscience,  as  anything  more 
than  a  formula  for  custom  and  tradition,  has 
been  bowed  out  of  the  world  by  large  numbers 
of  people.  A  perfect  picture  of  this  substitu¬ 
tion,  where  interest  in  the  questions  of  right 
and  wrong  with  the  emphasis  of  eternity  on 
them  has  given  way  to  a  new  scientific  descrip¬ 
tion  of  mental  operation,  is  given  by  H.  G. 
Wells  in  Joan  and  Peter: 

In  the  “eighties”  and  “nineties”  every  question  had 
been  positive  and  objective.  “People,”  you  said,  “think 
so  and  so.  Is  it  right?”  That  seemed  to  cover  the 
grounds  for  discussion  in  those  days.  One  believed  in  a 
superior  universal  reason  to  which  all  decisions  must 
ultimately  bow.  The  new  generation  was  beginning 
where  its  predecessors  left  off,  with  what  had  been  open 
questions  decided  and  carried  beyond  discussion.  It 
was  at  home  now  on  what  had  once  been  battlefields 
of  opinion.  The  new  generation  was  reading  William 
James  and  Bergson  and  Freud  and  becoming  more  and 
more  psychological.  “People,”  it  said,  “think  so  and  so. 
Why  do  they  do  so?”1 


In  similar  words  Professor  J.  H.  Robinson 
says  in  Mind  in  the  Making: 


1  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The  Macmillan  Company. 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  89 


To  the  modern  student  of  biology  and  anthropology 
man  is  neither  good  nor  bad.  There  is  no  longer  any 
“mystery  of  evil.”  But  the  mediaeval  notion  of  sin — a 
term  heavy  with  mysticism  and  deserving  of  careful 
scrutiny  by  every  thoughtful  person — still  confuses  us.? 


The  figure  of  “Duty,  stern  daughter  of  the 
voice  of  God,”  is  taken  down  from  its  place  in 
the  mind  and  heart.  The  “voice  of  God”  is  re¬ 
garded  as  merely  an  unscientific  name  for  men¬ 
tal  happenings  which  could  not  be  understood 
in  an  earlier  period  of  history.  Now  that  we 
have  the  methods  of  the  new  psychology  and 
psychoanalysis  we  can  readily  explain  how 
the  idea  arose — just  a  suppressed  desire  of 
some  sort!  The  mid-Victorianism  of  Lowell, 

“In  vain  we  call  old  notions  ‘fudge’ 

And  bend  our  conscience  to  our  dealing; 

The  Ten  Commandments  will  not  budge, 

And  stealing  will  continue  stealing,” 

is  sadly  out  of  tune  with  much  modern  litera¬ 
ture.  The  old  words  which  threw  upon  men’s 
minds  and  lives  a  divine  radiance — “obliga¬ 
tion,”  “duty,”  “conscience” — have  given  way 
to  an  easier  group  of  words  such  as  “self-ex¬ 
pression,”  “release,”  “complex,”  “independ¬ 
ence.” 


2  From  the  “Mind  in  the  Making.”  Copyright,  1921,  Harper  and  Bros. 


90 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


The  world  can  never  be  learned  by  learning 
its  details.  Science  performs  an  immeasura¬ 
ble  service  in  interpreting  the  material  details 
of  life  and  mastering  them  for  use.  But  when 
men  mistakenly  look  to  science  for  an  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  meaning  and  significance  of 
life  there  is  a  gaping  void  in  the  picture.  Sci¬ 
ence  can  never  be  a  substitute  for  conscience, 
for  the  response  of  the  soul  to  God,  for  the  rec¬ 
ognition  of  the  divine  right  of  moral  and  spirit¬ 
ual  realities  to  govern  life.  Science  without 
conscience  makes  chaos.  The  years  since  1914 
have  been  crashing  demonstrations  of  that 
proposition.  A  few  years  before  the  war 
Alfred  Bussell  Wallace  sang  an  optimistic 
hymn  of  praise  to  science  in  his  book  on  The 
'Nineteenth  Century.  He  pointed  out  that 
civilized  man  had  made  a  greater  advance  in 
the  acquirement  of  power  over  nature  during 
the  years  1850-1900  than  during  all  the  two 
thousand  years  preceding. 

But  we  may  well  ask  to-day,  To  what  has  it 
all  come?  Has  there  been  anything  like  a 
commensurate  moral  advance,  or  even  an  ap¬ 
preciable  increase  in  the  sum  of  human  happi¬ 
ness?  It  may  well  be  doubted.  This  faith  in 
science  as  a  source  of  moral  achievement  was 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  91 


infinitely  pathetic.  Havelock  Ellis  tells  how 
thirty  years  ago  he  and  others  stood  around 
Maxim  as  that  architect  of  death  explained 
his  new  gun. 

“But  will  this  not  make  war  very  terrible?”  Mr.  Ellis 
asked. 

“No,”  responded  Maxim,  confidently.  “It  will  make 
war  impossible.” 

Ellis  wrote  this  reminiscence  on  the  day  when  Maxim's 
death  was  announced,  November  SO,  1916,  and  added: 
“Even  the  brilliant  inventor  who  in  the  dawn  of  the 
Metal  Age  first  elongated  the  useful  daggerlike  knife 
into  the  dangerous  sword  was  doubtless  convinced  that 
he  had  made  war  impossible.” 


Disraeli  uttered  a  penetrating  truth  when 
he  said:  “Comfort  is  frequently  mistaken  for 
civilization.”  That  is  just  what  has  happened 
in  our  time.  Multitudes  of  people  have  con¬ 
fused  the  mechanical  mastery  of  nature  with 
a  social  millennium.  Without  conscience, 
without  the  understanding  of  spiritual  ends 
and  values  in  life,  we  have  merely  the  comfort 
of  the  pigsty. 

Sir  Richard  Gregory,  the  editor  of  Nature, 
the  most  important  British  scientific  journal, 
concludes  a  summary  of  the  gifts  of  science  to 
the  world  with  these  pregnant  words:  “The 
future  destiny  of  the  human  race  depends  on 


92 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


whether  men  shall  prove  themselves  worthy  of 
the  argosies  of  science  which  will  enter 
their  ports.”  In  other  words,  it  depends  on  the 
development  of  conscience. 

This  torn  world  of  ours  needs  a  more  strenu¬ 
ous  gospel  than  the  complacent  feeling  that  our 
sins  are  merely  bad  mistakes  on  the  road  up 
and  that  everything  will  come  out  all  right 
in  the  end.  Conscience  is  the  nervous  system 
of  humanity  and  our  hope  is  in  keeping  it  sen¬ 
sitive  to  the  valuations  and  judgments  of 
Jesus. 


Ill 

A  common  mistake  of  a  commercial  age  is  to 
confuse  what  is  called  “punch”  with  power . 
Now,  “punch”  is  an  ugly  word.  It  is  slang, 
and  particularly  offensive  slang.  But  it 
stands  for  an  ugly  thing.  It  is  impossible  to 
define  actually  what  is  called  “punch”  in  the 
business  and  even  the  literary  world.  But,  in 
general,  it  denotes  the  violent  energy  which 
“gets  there.”  It  is  not  the  creative  energy  of 
the  social  or  scientific  or  literary  world.  It 
is,  rather,  the  force  that  makes  a  resounding 
noise,  gives  a  sensation,  brings  immediate  re¬ 
sults.  To  use  a  pitifully  threadbare  and  un- 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  93 


lovely  expression,  “it  puts  things  across.” 
“Punch”  is  worshiped  by  great  numbers  of 
people  as  the  most  desirable  of  human  qual¬ 
ities.  The  figure  comes  from  the  prize  ring  and 
brings  with  it  the  morals  and  aroma  of  its 
birthplace.  Whole  magazines  and  many  cor¬ 
respondence  courses  are  devoted  to  the  cult  of 
“punch.”  The  great  army  of  “Develop  your 
Personality”  correspondence  courses  which  are 
offered  as  an  incentive  to  an  increase  in  salary, 
all  promise  the  gift  of  “punch”  as  the  golden 
key  which  unlocks  the  doors.  It  is  a  cult  of 
selfish  individualism,  the  achievement  of  per¬ 
sonal,- financial  and  social  success.  Big  sal¬ 
aries,  big  business,  selling  methods  with  lots 
of  “pep”  in  them — these  are  the  evidences  of 
power  in  the  eyes  of  a  great  multitude  which 
throngs  Broadway  and  Main  Street. 

The  same  is  true  in  the  literary  and  dra¬ 
matic  world.  The  novel  or  play  with  the  big 
scene  with  “punch”  in  it  may  safely  dispense 
with  all  the  unnecessary  frills,  such  as  the 
patient  drawing  of  character,  the  creation  of 
atmosphere  and  background,  the  expression  of 
truth.  It  is  sure  of  its  popular  success  without 
them.  But  “punch”  is  not  power  any  more 
than  the  blare  of  a  bass  drum  is  melody,  or  a 


94 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


penny  candle  is  a  star.  Our  civilization  is 
vibrant  with  “punch.”  The  advertisement 
writer,  the  sales  manager,  the  sign  painter 
and  the  “movie”  producer,  all  supply  it  in 
abundance.  It  is  tragically  deficient  in  power. 
Indeed,  the  outstanding  characteristic  of  our 
civilization  to-day  is  its  weakness.  Before  the 
material,  as  well  as  the  spiritual,  tasks  of  a 
world  that  needs  not  merely  to  be  recon¬ 
structed,  but  actually  to  be  saved  from  ruin, 
it  stands  dazed  in  an  uncomprehending  lan¬ 
guor. 

The  world  is  not  to  be  saved  by  bustle,  be  it 
ever  so  noisy.  It  is  not  to  be  saved  by 
dividends,  let  them  swell  as  they  may.  It 
is  only  to  be  saved  by  spiritual  forces.  In 
other  words — by  real  power .  When  men  for¬ 
get  that  and  forsake  the  spiritual  quality 
of  life  for  the  worship  of  its  crude  material 
prizes,  its  loud  notoriety  or  its  swift  aim¬ 
less  motion,  they  lose  the  things  which  make 
true  and  lasting  power. 

“Power  belongeth  unto  me,”  saith  the  Lord. 
It  is  moral  and  spiritual  ideas  which  give 
power  to  a  nation  or  to  a  person.  It  is  hard 
to  keep  our  vision  of  that  truth  clear  in  a  day 
of  clanging  noises,  just  as  it  is  hard  to  think 


IN  AN  AGE  OF  SUBSTITUTES  95 


clearly  while  a  brass  band  or  a  circus  parade 
is  passing  by.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  both 
the  brass  band  and  the  circus  parade  in  our 
present-day  life.  Consequently,  we  frequently 
confuse  size  and  significance.  Measured  by 
horse  power,  the  Majestic  is  a  much  greater 
ship  than  the  Mayflower.  Beside  the  Majestic 
on  her  last  trip  with  a  distinguished  passen¬ 
ger  list  of  a  thousand  including  scores  of  mil¬ 
lionaires,  diplomats,  world-famous  actresses, 
novelists  whose  books  sell  into  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  copies,  the  queer  little  May¬ 
flower  with  its  prosy  company  of  middle-class 
tradesmen  makes  a  ridiculous  figure.  When 
towed  alongside  the  great  modern  liner  the 
Mayflower  would  make  but  a  sorry  show. 
There  was  very  little  “pep”  on  the  Mayflower. 
But  there  was  power !  In  the  spiritual  ideals 
and  the  iron  will  of  that  little  company  there 
was  power  enough  to  create  a  Christian  civili¬ 
zation— a  new  world. 

Brethren,  let  us  pray.  Let  us  pray  for  eye¬ 
sight.  Let  us  join  our  petitions  to  that  of 
an  old  man  who  is  praying  for  us,  as  his  voice 
echoes  down  the  centuries :  “And  this  I  pray, 
that  your  love  may  abound  yet  more  and  more 
in  knowledge  and  discernment,  so  that  ye  may 


96 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


distinguish  things  that  differ,  that  ye  may  be 
sincere  and  void  of  offense  unto  the  day  of 
Christ,  being  filled  with  the  fruits  of  right¬ 
eousness  which  are  through  Jesus  Christ  unto 
the  glory  and  praise  of  God.” 


VI 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 

Hail! — Matthew 28.  9  (Moffatt’s  Translation). 

OUR  theme  is  a  part  of  the  most  uninter¬ 
esting  subject  in  the  world.  What  would 
you  call  the  most  uninteresting  thing  in  the 
world?  Many  of  you  would  doubtless  say  that 
it  is  your  job.  There  are  times  when  we  all 
feel  that  way,  and  there  are  times  when  nearly 
every  one  has  a  right  to  feel  that  way.  That 
is,  everyone  except  the  preacher.  Whenever 
the  preacher  finds  his  job  uninteresting  it  is 
high  time  for  him  to  take  out  a  superannuated 
relation,  because  he  has  already  automatically 
retired  from  the  effective  ranks. 

What  was  the  most  uninteresting  subject 
that  you  ever  studied?  With  some  it  was 
probably  arithmetic,  although  it  was  not  arith¬ 
metic  with  me.  There  has  always  been  an 
impenetrable  mystery  and  romance  about  fig¬ 
ures  before  which  I  bow  in  reverence  and  awe. 
As  it  was  in  the  beginning,  it  is  now,  and  no 
doubt  ever  shall  be.  The  most  uninteresting 

97 


98 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


subject  was  not  geography  because  there  were 
always  good  pictures  in  the  geography  to 
which  I  could  turn.  The  most  uninteresting 
thing  I  ever  studied  was  grammar.  I  believe 
many  of  you  will  agree  with  me.  When  to  use 
“would”  and  when  to  use  “should,”  when  to 
use  “will”  and  when  to  use  “shall” — I  am  glad 
such  questions  are  not  asked  in  polite  society. 
It  would  be  too  embarrassing  an  ordeal  for  all 
of  us.  Grammar  appears  to  our  imagination 
as  a  Sahara  desert,  without  a  single  oasis  and 
not  even  a  mirage  to  cheer  us  on  our  way.  I 
have  been  greatly  interested  to  note  that  the 
experts  of  the  General  Education  Board  have 
made  the  discovery  that  it  is  a  waste  of  time 
to  study  grammar.  I  always  knew  it  even  as 
a  boy  in  the  third  grade,  and  it  is  a  great  joy 
to  find  the  rest  of  the  world  catching  up 
with  me. 

Such  is  our  common  view  of  grammar.  Yet, 
like  many  common  views,  it  is  a  slander. 
Grammar  is  a  living  thing.  It  is  nothing  but 
a  method  of  marking  ways  of  thinking,  feeling, 
and  willing.  It  deals  with  throbbing  emo¬ 
tions.  Moods  and  tenses  and  punctuation 
points  are  a  chart  of  heart  beats.  Between  the 
emotional  climate  represented  by  a  question 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


99 


mark  and  that  indicated  by  an  exclamation 
point  there  is  a  difference  greater  than  the 
difference  between  the  climate  of  Iceland  and 
Egypt.  It  is  the  difference  between  midnight 
and  dawn. 

If  I  were  to  say  that  I  wished  to  speak  on 
some  points  of  New-Testament  grammar,  the 
exits  of  this  room  would  be  crowded.  It  would 
sound  like  the  prospectus  of  a  journey  across 
the  desert.  But  turn  that  subject  around  and 
state  it  as  it  really  is :  “Some  New-Testament 
ways  of  thinking  and  feeling,”  and  we  have 
a  thread  which  leads  up  directly  into  the 
secret  of  a  jubilant  and  conquering  faith. 

If  we  wander  much  through  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  with  our  eyes  open,  we  soon  discover  that 
there  is  a  “Good  Grammar  of  the  Kingdom,” 
certain  points  on  which,  if  we  keep  our  gram¬ 
mar  right,  we  move  over  into  the  apostolic 
succession  and  become  heirs  of  that  legacy  of 
grace  with  all  of  its  strange  potencies  and 
high  joys. 

I 

The  fundamental  point  of  New  Testament 
grammar  is  the  use  of  the  exclamation  point. 
We  find  it  after  the  word  which  is  our  text — • 


100 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Hail ! — the  word  that  marks  the  supreme  mo¬ 
ment  of  human  and  divine  history.  What  else 
could  punctuate  such  a  word  but  an  exclama¬ 
tion  point?  That  word  “Hail,”  the  first  word 
of  the  risen  Christ  on  the  resurrection  morn¬ 
ing,  expresses  the  new  heart  beat  of  humanity. 
It  is  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  race.  And  yet 
it  is  a  strange  thing  that  in  both  the  King 
James  and  Revised  versions  of  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  we  find  this  word,  this  victorious,  divine 
salute  to  the  world  punctuated  with  a  period. 
It  is  grotesque.  Try  to  read  it  that  way,  “ Jesus 
met  them  saying,  ‘Hail’  ”  (period).  It  can’t 
be  done!  The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  the 
earliest  manuscripts  of  the  Gospels  had  no 
punctuation  marks  in  them,  and  the  imagina¬ 
tion  of  the  translators  of  the  Scriptures  was 
hardly  adequate  to  the  epic  task  of  punctu¬ 
ating  the  story  of  Jesus. 

Imagine  translating  any  one  of  the  Gospels 
or  the  book  of  Acts  without  having  a  whole 
barrel  of  exclamation  points  within  reach! 
The  sanctified  imagination  of  Doctor  Moffatt 
has  recaptured  the  original  inflection  of  Jesus 
and  has  preserved  the  divine  exclamation 
points. 

Christ  put  a  stupendous  exclamation  point 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


101 


into  human  life.  It  is  a  supreme  tragedy  when 
we  lose  it.  The  secret  of  the  impotency  of 
much  of  our  contemporary  religion  is  that  it 
is  wrongly  punctuated.  The  exclamation 
point  is  missing.  It  ought  never  to  drop  out 
of  our  mind  that  the  chief  point  in  the  New 
Testament  is  the  exclamation  point.  The 
conquering,  glowing,  invigorated  mood  is  the 
enacting  clause  of  our  faith.  Without  it  that 
faith  is  a  dead  instrument. 

It  is  a  -striking  thought  that  so  many  people 
seem  to  be  unaware  that  the  Christian  religion 
is,  should  be,  might  be,  a  power — a  vibrant 
energy  in  daily  life.  So  many  Christians  live 
in  what  might  be  called  the  pre-Franklin  era 
of  grace.  Before  Benjamin  Franklin  began 
to  talk  to  the  heavens  over  a  silken  cord 
attached  to  a  kite  electricity  was  only  a  vague 
presence  in  the  air  sharply  felt  at  times  of 
disturbance  when  out  of  dark  clouds  shot 
forked  gleams  of  lightning.  Yet  that  vague 
power  was  not  harnessed  to  lifting  life’s  loads 
or  carrying  its  traffic  up  hill  with  an  easy 
and  ample  power.  Since  Franklin’s  time  elec¬ 
tricity  has  been  not  an  occasional  bolt  from 
the  sky,  but  a  motive  power  available  for 
everyday  tasks. 


102 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


So  much  faith  is  vague  and  diluted.  It 
cannot  he  measured  in  man-power  or  har¬ 
nessed  to  men’s  tasks.  Such  powerless  faith 
is  full  of  question  marks  and  full  stops.  It 
lacks  the  essential  gift  of  God  to  man — a  reso¬ 
lute  attitude  of  emphatic  joy.  Christianity’s 
exclamation  point  is  found  not  only  in  the 
“Hail”  of  resurrection  victory ;  it  is  found  in 
that  lifting  word  which  Jesus  spoke  to  the 
helpless  cripple :  “Courage,  son !  Thy  sins  are 
forgiven  thee!”  The  weak  limbs,  the  weak 
will,  the  quavering  heart  are  empowered;  the 
man  walks  erect.  That  is  the  charter,  the 
divine  will,  by  which  we  are  heirs  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

That  this  legacy  is  not  merely  a  paper  in¬ 
strument  let  the  glorious  company  of  those 
who  have  stood  up  and  walked  in  the  power 
of  Christ  demonstrate.  What  a  parade  down 
the  centuries !  Or,  rather,  what  a  lyric  dance, 
beginning  with  the  very  cripple  who  was  let 
down  through  the  roof  to  receive  the  empower¬ 
ing  word  of  Christ!  They  are  a  great  com¬ 
pany  of  Overcomers,  dotting  the  years  with 
radiant  exclamation  points  of  leaping  happi¬ 
ness  and  enduring  power,  men  and  women 
with  an  emphatic  sense  of  the  good  of  life, 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


103 


its  available  power,  its  lasting  joy.  They  have 
kept  the  world’s  calendar  at  springtime. 

How  does  your  religion  punctuate  your  life? 
A  little  girl  once  told  her  pastor  who  had  asked 
about  the  condition  of  her  sick  grandmother, 
that  the  lady  “was  in  a  very  bad  way;  she 
had  passed  into  a  state  of  “comma.”  That  is 
too  often  true  and  always  tragic.  We  cannot 
say  that  a  person’s  life  has  come  to  a  full 
stop.  It  has  merely  gone  into  a  state  of  “com¬ 
ma,”  where  everything  has  been  stricken  with 
the  paralysis  of  a  pause.  So  many  lives  are 
what  the  economist  would  call  “marginal.” 
They  barely  pay.  The  question,  “Is  life  worth 
living?”  would  be  answered  “Yes,”  by  a  hair’s 
breadth.  They  are  poised  on  a  fine  balance 
which  goes  up  one  day  and  down  the  next, 
just  as  a  finely  adjusted  chemist’s  scale 
responds  to  every  passing  breath.  So  the 
answer  to  whether  life  is  good  or  not  is  “Yes” 
to-day  and  “No”  to-morrow.  It  is  from  that 
trembling  balance  that  Christ  came  to  redeem 
us.  We  need  a  wider  conception  of  the  re¬ 
demptive  work  of  Christ  than  the  one  usually 
given.  He  came  not  merely  to  redeem  us  from 
the  destruction  of  sin  but  to  redeem  our 
marginal  lives  from  their  hesitations  and 


104 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


penury.  It  is  a  tragedy  that  to  so  many  Chris¬ 
tians  the  New  Testament  is  written  without 
an  exclamation  point.  It  has  brought  into 
their  lives  nothing  which  causes  them  to  go 
down  the  years  as  the  man  healed  at  the  beau¬ 
tiful  gate  of  the  temple  went,  “ Walking  and 
leaping  and  praising  God.”  Their  religion  has 
no  thundering  affirmations,  no  enthusiastic 
ejaculations,  no  epic  moods  of  grandeur. 

Augustine  Birrell  comments  on  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson’s  leaving  the  ministry  in  1832 
by  saying  that  “his  attitude  toward  it  was 
something  like  a  yawn.”  That  is  exactly  the 
attitude  of  many  people  to  their  religious 
faith.  Their  religion  resembles  the  praise  of 
a  minister  given  by  an  eighteenth-century  poli¬ 
tician,  who  said  that  “he  was  a  delightful 
fellow  and  wholly  devoid  of  enthusiasm.” 
That  was  the  high-water  mark  of  a  compli¬ 
ment  to  a  minister  in  political  circles  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  But  it  actually  describes 
many  limping,  halting,  frustrated  souls  in  the 
twentieth  century. 

Has  your  religion  any  power?  Can  it  do 
anything  for  you  and  through  you?  Has  it 
brought  a  partial,  unsatisfied,  futile  life  into  a 
state  of  exclamation  point?  That  is  what  it 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


105 


ought  to  do  and  what  it  may  do.  Otherwise 
our  whole  life  is  a  mistake  in  grammar.  We 
are  missing  our  destiny,  just  as  birds  which 
never  fly  miss  their  destiny.  We  do  not  re¬ 
semble  eagles,  which  we  ought  to  resemble 
according  to  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures, 
but,  rather,  stupid  penguins  which  never  leave 
the  ground  except  for  a  few  awkward  flaps. 

Two  aspects  of  life  are  dull,  heavy  prose 
without  Christ’s  exclamation  point. 

1.  Without  an  exclamation  point  the  daily 
entanglements  of  minor  circumstances  will 
hold  us  prisoner.  A  life  which  should  be  an 
erect,  forward  stride  becomes  like  Gulliver 
stretched  out  on  the  ground,  tied  securely  by 
hundreds  of  puny,  yet  powerful  threads.  We 
lose  the  mood  of  happy  valiancy  through  small 
irritations  unless  we  are  lifted  above  them  by 
the  surging  of  the  great  enthusiasms  of  Christ. 
The  most  complete  denial  of  the  faith  of  Christ 
which  anyone  can  make  is  to  go  through  life 
the  victim  of  a  gloomy  and  depressing  despond¬ 
ency.  That  is  the  practical  atheism  which 
throws  out  its  deadly  influence  twenty-four 
hours  a  day. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  how  so  many  Chris¬ 
tians  can  profess  the  tremendous  faith  of  the 


106 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


New  Testament  and  yet  have  the  course  of 
their  lives  bound  by  the  shallows  and  miseries 
of  a  gently  complaining  disposition.  The 
large  part  of  a  great  many  lives  is  nothing 
but  a  steady  drizzle  of  small  inconveniences, 
discomforts,  annoyances,  depressions  and  de¬ 
spondencies.  To  escape  from  this  drizzle 
many  have  sought  out  weird  and  weak  sub¬ 
stitutes  for  Christ,  such  as  ‘New  Thought’ 
dilutions  in  pale,  pastel  shades  of  the  gospel 
of  the  energizing  Christ.  What  a  commen¬ 
tary  on  the  loose  hold  that  we  have  on  our 
religion  it  is  that  the  formula  of  Coue’s  “Day 
by  day  in  every  way  I  am  getting  better  and 
better”  should  be  taken  up  by  such  large  com¬ 
panies  of  people!  For  it  is  only  a  weak  and 
shadowy  substitute  for  that  practical  power 
of  Paul’s,  “Though  our  outward  man  is  decay¬ 
ing,  our  inward  man  is  being  renewed  day 
by  day.” 

2.  The  enterprise  of  Christian  conquest  so 
often  lacks  the  necessary  exclamation  point. 
To  thousands  of  us  Christ’s  great  word  “Go !” 
has  no  commanding  thrill.  When  that  word 
sounds  in  our  hearts  with  God’s  great  empha¬ 
sis  of  exclamation  and  command,  our  lives  are 
transformed  from  an  aimless  camping  trip 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


107 


into  an  eager  crusade.  Nothing  can  so  lift 
life  out  of  petty  ruts  as  to  hear  with  a  thrill 
and  answer  with  a  glad  affirmation  the  old 
slogan  of  Peter  the  Hermit,  “God  wills  it!” 

II 

How  may  we  recapture  and  retain  the  chief 
point  in  Christianity — its  exclamation  point? 

One  other  point  of  New  Testament  gram¬ 
mar  gives  us  the  secret.  It  is  to  have  our 
religion  in  the  possessive  case.  The  men  and 
women  in  the  church  of  the  book  of  Acts  had 
learned  to  speak  of  “my  God”  and  “our  God.” 
Their  Christianity  was  not  objective;  it  was 
possessive.  They  possessed  Christ.  Christ 
possessed  them.  That  was  the  secret  of  that 
marvelous  power,  the  throbbing  of  which  we 
can  hear  all  through  the  New  Testament  just 
as  one  may  feel  all  over  a  building  the  beating 
of  a  mighty  engine  in  the  depths  below. 
Life  took  on  a  bound  and  a  leap.  That  pos¬ 
sessive  case  runs  all  through  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment.  We  hear  it  in  the  words  of  Thomas — 
uMy  Lord  and  My  God !”  How  else  could  one 
punctuate  that  exclamation  but  with  an  ex¬ 
clamation  point?  They  learned  that  possessive 


108 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


case  from  Jesus  in  hearing  him  say  uMy 
Father” — U0ur  Father.”  Those  possessive 
pronouns  put  an  exaltation  into  the  lowliest 
heart.  Out  of  the  poverty,  out  of  the  ghetto 
of  Roman  cities,  listen  to  the  words  which 
issued  from  the  lips  of  those  whom  Christ 
had  possessed :  “Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons 
of  God.”  Is  it  any  wonder  that  men  waxed 
valiant  on  words  like  that  and  went  into 
battle  with  them?  What  a  prize  that  sense  of 
a  personal  relation  to  God  is!  And  how 
subtly  it  evaporates — disappearing  like  a 
great  mountain  peak  suddenly  enveloped  by 
a  cloud  of  mist.  What  a  wTorld-creating  dif¬ 
ference  there  is  in  that  little  word  “my!” 
Men  talk  much  about  God.  They  do  not  talk 
nearly  so  much  about  “My  God.”  Yet  it  is 
only  when  we  can  speak  of  “My  God”  that  the 
word  has  any  real  power  for  us.  Marcus  Dods 
tells  of  teaching  his  little  five-year-old  girl 
the  twenty-third  psalm.  He  said  to  her: 

“Daughter,  I  want  you  to  learn  the  most 
beautiful  words  ever  written  so  that  you  will 
know  them  all  your  life.  Now,  repeat  after 
me,  ‘The  Lord  is  my  shepherd/  ” — 

His  little  girl  looked  up  into  his  eyes  and 
said — ‘The  Lord  is  your  shepherd/  ” — 


EXCLAMATION  POINTS 


109 


“No,”  lie  corrected  her,  “say  just  what  I 
say — ‘The  Lord  is  my  shepherd/  ” — 

“Didn’t  I  say  that  the  Lord  was  your  shep¬ 
herd?”  questioned  the  little  girl  with  a 
troubled  face: 

It  was  a  long  time  before  he  made  it  clear 
that  she  was  to  use  that  exact  word  “my.” 
What  a  difference  there  is  between  saying, 
“The  Lord  is  your  shepherd”  and  “The  Lord 
is  my  shepherd” !  You  may  not  feel  that  dif¬ 
ference  very  much  now.  Some  day  you  will. 
Some  day  when  your  path  winds  down  through 
the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  there  will 
be  nothing  for  you  to  hold  on  to  if  you  have 
not  mastered  that  little  word  “my”  and  can 
say  “The  Lord  is  my  shepherd.” 

We  spoke  a  moment  ago  about  Thomas. 
That  story  of  Thomas’  journey  from  the  bleak 
and  cold  uncertainty  of  doubt  into  the  ra¬ 
diant  warmth  of  faith  in  his  living  Lord  is 
the  most  wonderful  pilgrimage  in  human  life. 
It  is  the  journey  from  a  question  mark  to  an 
exclamation  point.  That  pathway  of  Thomas 
is  an  open  path  and  we  may  tread  it  if  we 
will  set  our  faces  in  the  direction  of  our 
Father’s  face.  If  we  open  our  hearts  and 
minds  to  his  entrance,  bringing  our  lives  into 


110 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


real  relationship  of  sonship  to  him,  we  too  may 
reach  that  summit  of  life’s  achievement  where 
we  can  say  “My  Lord  and  My  God.”  Those 
words  lead  us  out  of  baffled,  frustrated,  hesi¬ 
tant  lives  to  a  new  power  and  lasting  joy. 


VII 


THE  SPRING  SONG 

“Be  ye  transformed  fry  the  renewing  of  your 
mind.” — Romans  12.  2. 

THE  world’s  great  Spring  Song  is  not  Men¬ 
delssohn’s  but  God’s.  We  catch  some  of 
its  strains  in  that  melodious  word  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans,  “Be  ye  transformed 
by  the  renewing  of  your  mind.”  That  great 
word  of  Paul’s  is  the  chord  of  a  divine  Spring 
Song  which  runs  through  the  Bible  and 
through  life.  Human  lives  are  transformed, 
just  as  the  earth  is  transformed  during  the 
progressive  miracle  of  March,  April,  and  May, 
by  coming  into  a  new  relationship  to  heaven. 

We  do  not  think  much  of  spring  in  raw 
March  days.  Indeed,  the  thought  of  a  Spring 
Song  the  first  week  of  March  seems  born  out 
of  due  time.  Yet  those  cold  days,  when  the 
eye  can  discern  nothing  happening  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  are  the  days  when  God’s  great 
overture  of  spring  begins. 

Ill 


112 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


“There  is  a  day  in  spring, 

When  under  all  the  earth  the  secret  germs 
Begin  to  stir  and  glow  before  they  bud. 

The  wealth  and  festal  pomps  of  midsummer 
Lie  in  the  heart  of  that  inglorious  hour 
Which  no  man  names  with  blessing,  though  its  work 
Is  blessed  by  all  the  world.” 

For  spring  does  not  begin  with  violets  but 
with  astronomy.  Before  we  have  the  song  of 
the  robins  we  must  have  the  music  of  the 
spheres.  Both  the  music  and  the  violets  are, 
in  a  very  real  sense,  branches  of  astronomy. 

In  other  words,  the  Spring  Song  of  the 
earth  begins  right  after  the  winter  solstice  in 
December.  It  begins  when,  to  use  our  com¬ 
mon,  inaccurate  manner  of  speaking  of  astro¬ 
nomical  truth,  the  sun  away  down  south  of  the 
equator  begins  to  speak  to  our  northern  half 
of  the  earth  and  say,  “Seek  ye  my  face,”  and 
the  earth  answers  the  pull  of  the  sun  upon 
it  and  begins  to  turn  on  its  axis,  answering, 
“Thy  face,  Lord,  will  I  seek.”  The  earth 
brings  itself  into  a  new  and  closer  adjustment 
to  the  sun,  and  the  result  is  the  fragrant  mys¬ 
tery  of  spring  and  summer. 

God’s  springtime  in  the  heart  begins  when 
the  soul  hears  his  voice,  through  the  magnet- 


THE  SPRING  SONG 


113 


ism  of  Jesus  and  the  still,  small  voice  within, 
saying,  “Seek  ye  my  face.”  As  the  soul 
answers,  “Thy  face,  Lord,  will  I  seek,”  and 
brings  the  life  into  a  new  adjustment  to  God, 
then  life  begins  to  flower  and  bear  fruit.  We 
are  transformed  by  the  renewing  of  our  mind. 

All  that  a  countryside  locked  in  the  steril¬ 
ity  of  winter  needs  is  that  the  influences  of  the 
sun  be  given  a  chance  at  it.  Every  man’s  funda¬ 
mental  need  is  to  clear  away  the  accumulation 
of  things  that  shut  God  out  of  his  life.  If 
you  should  ask  the  little  wild  flower  just  peep¬ 
ing  up  out  of  the  earth  along  the  roadside, 
“What  do  you  need,  little  flower?”  and  that 
little  flower  could  answer,  it  would  say  some¬ 
thing  like  this :  “Oh,  I  need  the  sky ;  I  need 
the  sea;  I  need  the  wind  and  rain.”  It  is  a 
large  demand  for  a  little  flower  to  make,  but 
it  needs  all  the  infinities  of  the  sky  and  sea 
in  order  that  it  may  fulfill  the  destiny  that 
God  has  for  that  one  little  flower.  So  if  we 
ask  a  man  likewise,  “What  do  you  need,  little 
man?”  if  he  answers  truly,  it  will  be  like  the 
flower’s  answer :  “Oh,  I  need  the  sky.  I  need 
God.”  He  needs  the  infinity  of  God  in  his 
life  to  fulfill  the  destiny  God  has  for  him. 

Men  build  roofs  over  their  minds  which 


114 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


shut  out  God.  Some  do  it  with  a  low  mud- 
thatch  roof,  shutting  out  God  by  things  which 
are  coarse  and  unclean.  But  other  kinds  of 
roofs  we  build  will  shut  God  out  of  our  lives 
just  as  effectively.  We  can  do  it  with  a  golden 
dome.  We  can  pile  one  interest  after  another 
into  our  mind,  until  God  has  as  much  chance 
to  get  into  our  hearts  and  minds  as  his  sun¬ 
light  has  to  get  into  the  cellar  of  a  forty-story 
office  building.  Any  roof  that  shuts  out  God 
is  a  tragedy,  no  matter  how  notable  it  may  be 
in  itself. 

But  a  man  may  say :  “I  don’t  want  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  sky,  I  don’t  want 
any  relation  to  the  sunshine  at  all.”  Very 
well.  He  need  not  have  any.  He  can  roof 
himself  away  from  it.  He  can  wall  himself 
in  so  that  it  never  reaches  him.  But  every¬ 
thing  about  that  man  will  show  it.  His  skin 
will  show  it.  His  lungs  will  show  it.  His 
blood  will  show  it.  Everything  about  him 
will  show  that  in  shutting  himself  away  from 
the  sunlight  he  has  denied  a  fundamental  law 
of  his  being,  which  is  the  need  for  commerce 
with  the  sky  in  the  form  of  light.  On  a 
larger  scale,  when  a  city  forgets  that  funda¬ 
mental  need  of  sunlight  for  its  people,  when 


THE  SPRING  SONG 


115 


it  allows  murderous  tenement  houses  to  be 
built,  monstrous  caves  full  of  dark  rooms,  it 
soon  pays  the  frightful  penalty  by  those 
plagues  known  as  “lung  blocks,”  where  four 
and  five  hundred  cases  of  tuberculosis  are  to 
be  found  in  the  confines  of  a  single  block. 

So  a  man  may  say,  “I  don’t  want  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  God.”  Very  well.  He 
does  not  have  to,  consciously.  But  everything 
in  him  will  show  that  in  shutting  God  out 
of  his  life  he  has  denied  the  fundamental  ne¬ 
cessity  of  his  nature.  “We  and  God  have 
business  with  each  other,”  declares  William 
James,  “and  in  opening  ourselves  to  his  influ¬ 
ence  our  deepest  destiny  is  fulfilled.”  W.  H. 
Lecky  gives  utterance  to  the  same  truth : 
“That  religious  instincts  are  as  truly  part  of 
our  nature  as  are  our  appetites  and  nerves 
is  a  fact  which  all  history  establishes,  and 
which  forms  one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of 
the  realitv  of  the  unseen  world  to  which  soul 
of  man  continually  tends.” 

We  must  turn  our  life  on  its  axis  toward 

tir 

God,  as  the  earth  turns  to  the  sun  in  the 
spring.  So  many  things  conspire  to  make 
life  predominantly  material.  There  is  always 
a  battle  royal  to  be  fought  between  the  soul 


116 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


and  things,  but  it  seems  to  us  to-day  as 
though  the  struggle  against  materialism  were 
a  little  harder  fight  than  at  other  times.  It 
demands  a  keener  watchfulness  and  stouter 
struggle  if  life  is  to  be  spiritual  in  quality. 
The  unresting  pressure  of  the  high  cost  of 
living  is  a  spiritual  as  well  as  a  financial  prob¬ 
lem.  The  price  of  things  is  a  thought  which 
never  leaves  the  mind.  It  is  omnipresent  and 
almost  omnipotent.  It  makes  to-morrow  a 
great  uncertainty  and  tends  to  stifle  the  spir¬ 
itual  life  like  a  building  which  has  caved  in. 
Weariness  from  the  strain  of  a  high-pitched 
idealism  during  the  Great  War  leaves  us  prey 
to  a  materialistic  reaction.  The  hurry  to 
which  our  life  is  geared  also  gives  the  soul  a 
small  chance  to  live.  We  constantly  use  the 
expression,  “Hurry  up.”  It  is  almost  a  na¬ 
tional  motto,  displacing  E  Pluribus  Unum. 
But  the  inward  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  we 
never  “hurry  up.”  We  always  “hurry  down.” 
Hurry  always  pulls  one  down  from  the  high¬ 
est  levels  of  life.  Haste  demands  a  lighten¬ 
ing  of  the  cargo  for  the  sake  of  speed  and  in 
the  frantic  race  the  things  which  make  for 
the  strengthening  and  enrichment  of  spiritual 
life  are  thrown  overboard. 


THE  SPRING  SONG 


117 


All  of  these  conditions  intensify  the  need 
of  turning  our  life’s  attitude  and  outlook,  of 
making  a  new  adjustment  to  God,  so  that  by 
a  springtime  renewal  of  the  mind  there  may  be 
a  transformation  of  the  life.  Botanists  tell 
us  that  a  tree  gets  only  one-twentieth  of  its 
nourishment  from  the  ground.  The  rest  it 
drinks  in  by  its  aerial  roots  from  the  air. 
The  nourishment  of  the  mind  and  soul  de¬ 
pends  just  as  much  on  aerial  roots,  on  what 
is  taken  into  life  from  the  influences  of  God. 
A  renewed  mind  is  like  a  renewed  earth.  It 
is  newly  conscious  of  heaven — of  God:  newly 
filled  with  the  influences  of  God  playing  upon 
it,  newly  active  with  God  in  working  out  his 
great  purposes. 

It  is  this  prior  necessity  of  spring  bloom¬ 
ing— the  necessity  for  a  new  relationship  to 
God — which  the  world  is  most  liable  to  forget 
these  days.  Men  are  busy  planning  gardens; 
they  are  marking  rows  along  which  the  fruits 
of  cooperation,  peace,  and  progress  may  grow. 
Congresses,  parliaments,  and  associations  are 
busy  writing  programs — arranging  trellises 
along  which  the  morning-glories  of  good  will 
and  justice  are  to  climb.  All  very  well.  But 
trellises  and  garden  beds  do  not  make  spring. 


118 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


The  adjustment  of  earth  to  the  sun  must  come 
first.  All  the  programs  in  the  world  do  not 
bring  forth  the  fruit  of  peace  and  good  will. 
It  is  only  the  adjustment  of  the  earth  to  God 
which  will  do  that.  We  must  renew  the 
world's  mind  if  the  world  is  to  be  trans¬ 
formed — let  it  receive  the  great  fructifying 
thought  of  God  the  Father,  and  the  quicken¬ 
ing  conception  of  his  kingdom. 

It  is  that  renewal  which  is  for  each  one  of 
us,  as  it  is  for  all  of  us  together  as  humanity, 
life’s  major  issue.  William  Butler  Yeats,  the 
Irish  poet,  has  defined  genius  as  “the  art  of 
living  with  the  major  issues  of  life.”  What¬ 
ever  the  statement  may  lack  as  a  definition  of 
genius,  it  enshrines  a  noble  ideal  of  life.  The 
secret  of  both  joy  and  power  is  locked  up  in 
the  art  of  living  with  life’s  major  issues,  the 
things  which  feed  its  central  springs. 

It  is  an  ever-present  need  of  our  lives  that 
we  may  be  able  unerringly  to  recognize  the 
things  which  are  the  main  business  of  living. 
Many  lives  drift  into  a  state  much  like  a  bad 
snarl  in  a  parliamentary  meeting;  they  get  so 
entangled  in  substitutes,  and  amendments, 
and  amendments  to  amendments,  that  they 
never  vote  on  the  main  proposition  at  all. 


THE  SPRING  SONG 


119 


They  never  arrive  at  the  Order  of  the  Day. 
The  Previous  Question  of  Existence — the  pur¬ 
pose  and  goal  of  life — is  lost  sight  of  in  a 
multitude  of  futile  motions.  So  life  adjourns 
in  empty  confusion  without  its  fundamental 
concerns  ever  having  been  touched. 

That  is  a  great  word  of  Phillips  Brooks  to 
young  ministers :  “Attach  yourself  to  the 
center  of  your  ministry  and  not  to  some  point 
on  its  circumference.”  It  is  a  word  for  every 
man,  as  well  as  for  the  minister:  “Attach 
yourself  to  the  center  of  your  life  and  not 
to  some  point  on  its  circumference.”  To  keep 
the  renewing  and  transforming  springtime  of 
God’s  presence  in  our  lives — here  is  the  major 
issue  which  outranks  all  others. 

During  the  war  the  Navy  Department  made 
an  appeal  to  the  nation  for  old  binocular 
glasses.  There  was  something  very  arresting 
about  the  call  for  aids  to  vision  of  other  days 
as  a  help  in  fighting  the  battles  of  the  present. 
There  is  a  deep  spiritual  suggestiveness  in  the 
appeal,  for  that  is  what  we  need — old  binoc¬ 
ulars  for  to-day’s  conflict.  We  need  the  lens 
of  faith  with  which  Abraham  looked  up  into 
the  sky  as  he  went  out  from  Chaldea ;  we  need 
the  clear  vision  of  Moses  as  he  endured  as 


120 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


seeing  Him  who  is  invisible;  we  need  the  sus¬ 
taining  vision  of  the  psalmist,  who  records 
his  pilgrimage  through  the  day  of  despair,  “I 
had  fainted,  unless  I  had  believed  to  see  the 
goodness  of  the  Lord  in  the  land  of  the  living.” 

There  is  no  patent  process  for  keeping  the 
souks  calendar  at  springtime.  But  there  is 
a  sure  reward  which  comes  from  the  practice 
of  holding  our  mind  and  heart  deliberately 
open  to  God,  and  creating  a  central  place  in 
our  thought  from  which  his  truth  may  pene¬ 
trate  all  our  mental  life. 

Minds  so  renewed  mean  lives  transformed. 
They  mean  earth  transformed.  That  is  the 
motif  of  God’s  Spring  Song. 

“For  surely  in  the  blind,  deep  buried  roots, 

Of  all  men’s  souls  to-day 
A  secret  quiver  shoots. 

The  darkness  in  us  is  aware 
Of  something  potent,  burning  through  the  earth.” 

The  Spring  Song  is  a  great  symphony  from 
the  theme,  “If  any  man  is  in  Christ  Jesus,  he 
is  a  new  creature.” 

The  world  is  locked  in  winter.  All  conti¬ 
nents  might  unite  in  the  line,  “Now  is  the 
winter  of  our  discontent.”  It  is  waiting  for  a 


THE  SPRING  SONG 


121 


Spring  Song.  For  long  bleak  years  a  miserere 
of  desolation  lias  pealed  forth.  The  earnest 
expectation  of  the  creation  waiteth  for  the 
revelation  of  a  sweeter  melody.  The  world’s 
transformation  can  only  come  through  re¬ 
newed  minds  adjusted  in  harmony  to  the  will 
and  love  of  God. 


VIII 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 
Possess  thou  the  west, ’’—Deuteronomy  33.  23 


MINISTER  with  a  fine  gift  for  exagger- 


1  *  ation,  once  said  that  the  three  greatest 
ships  in  history  were  Noah’s  Ark,  the  May¬ 
flower  and  the  Prairie  Schooner.  They  were 
built  on  very  different  lines  of  construction, 
but  they  were  all  alike  in  this,  that  each  one 
carried  the  best  of  an  old  world  over  into  a 
new  one.  The  remark  gives  us  an  imaginative 
grasp  of  an  often  forgotten  truth,  that  the 
discovery  of  America  was  a  long  process  ex¬ 
tending  over  centuries.  The  Mayflower  and 
the  Prairie  Schooner  were  as  much  a  part  of 
it  as  the  Santa  Maria.  Even  the  elementary 
physical  exploit  of  pushing  back  the  veil  from 
the  continent  was  an  adventure  which  occu¬ 
pied  four  hundred  years.  In  John  Fisk’s  great 
work  on  The  Discovery  of  America  the  actual 
voyage  of  Columbus  occupied  only  a  propor¬ 
tionately  small  amount  of  space.  To  tell  the 


122 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  123 


story  of  the  discovery  of  the  continent  requires 
the  historian  to  begin  two  hundred  years  be¬ 
fore  the  discovery  was  made,  in  describing  the 
intellectual  and  commercial  development 
which  made  the  discovery  possible.  He  must 
also  continue  his  story  to  cover  three  hundred 
years  after  the  discovery  until  the  whole  con¬ 
tinent  was  explored. 

The  discovery  of  America  in  its  significance, 
as  a  political,  intellectual,  and  moral  force  in 
the  world,  was  an  even  longer,  more  com¬ 
plex  process.  The  most  important  results 
that  can  come  from  our  thinking  of  this  great 
process  is  the  realization  that  we  are  in  the 
very  midst  of  it.  The  best  part  of  it  is  still 
ahead. 

The  discovery  of  America  was  not  merely 
the  business  of  Columbus.  It  is  the  business 
of  all  of  us  to  discover  for  our  own  time  the 
full  meaning  and  significance  of  America  for 
itself  and  for  the  world.  That  occupation  is 
not  only  the  chief  responsibility  of  the  citizens 
of  America;  it  may  be  also  their  chief  ex¬ 
hilaration. 

This  long  process  has  many  well  marked 
’  stages. 


124 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


I 

1.  Columbus  discovered  America.  There 
is  great  zest  in  loosening  the  check-rein  of  our 
imagination  a  bit  until  we  really  feel  afresh 
the  thrill  of  the  epic  adventure  of  Columbus, 
pushing  his  way  out  into  the  great  dark  mys¬ 
tery  of  the  westward  trail  across  the  sea. 

It  was  one  of  the  world’s  sublimest  ventures 
in  faith.  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  in  a  fantastic 
and  whimsical  poem,  has  caught  the  pure, 
baffling  wonder  of  it : 

“How  on  the  earth  did  Columbus  get  over 
Is  a  pure  wonder  to  me,  I  protest, 

Cabot  and  Raleigh,  too,  that  well-read  rover, 
Frobisher,  Dampier,  Drake  and  the  rest. 

Bad  enough  all  the  same, 

For  them  that  after  came, 

But,  in  great  Heaven’s  name, 

How  he  should  ever  think 
That  on  the  other  brink 
Of  this  wild  waste  terra  firma  should  be. 

Is  a  pure  wonder,  I  must  say,  to  me. 

“How  a  man  ever  should  hope  to  get  thither, 

E’en  if  he  knew  that  there  was  another  side; 

But  to  suppose  he  should  come  any  whither, 

Sailing  straight  on  into  chaos  untried, 

In  spite  of  the  motion 
Across  the  whole  ocean, 

To  stick  to  the  notion 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  125 


That  in  some  nook  or  bend 
Of  a  sea  without  end 

He  should  find  North  and  South  America, 

Was  a  pure  madness,  indeed  I  must  say,  to  me. 

“What  if  wise  men  had,  as  far  back  as  Ptolemy, 

Judged  that  the  earth  like  an  orange  was  round, 
None  of  them  ever  said,  Come  along,  follow  me, 
Sail  to  the  West,  and  the  East  will  be  found. 

Many  a  day  before 
Ever  they’d  come  ashore, 

From  the  San  Salvador, 

Sadder  and  wiser  men 
They’d  have  turned  back  again; 

And  that  he  did  not,  but  did  cross  the  sea 
Is  a  pure  wonder,  I  must  say,  to  me.’’1 2 

Moving  on  a  higher  plane  more  in  accord 
with  the  daring  faith  of  a  great  soul,  is 
Joaquin  Miller’s  noble  poem  in  which  we  can 
almost  feel  the  spray  of  the  sea  pounding  on 
the  deck: 

“They  sailed.  They  sailed.  Then  spake  the  mate, 
‘This  mad  sea  shows  his  teeth  tonight. 

He  curls  his  lip,  he  lies  in  wait, 

He  lifts  his  teeth  as  if  to  bite. 

Brave  Admiral,  say  but  one  good  word, 

What  shall  we  do  when  hope  is  gone?’ 

The  words  leaped  like  a  leaping  sword, 

‘Sail  on!  Sail  on!  Sail  on!  and  on!’”* 

1  From  “Poems  of  Arthur  Hugh  Hough.’’  Reprinted  by  permission  of 
The  Macmillan  Company. 

2  Permission  of  Harr  Wagner  Publishing  Company,  publishers  of 
Joaquin  Miller’s  complete  poems. 


126 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


But  that  was  only  Chapter  One.  Merely 
the  book  of  Genesis.  Exodus,  which  followed 
it,  moved  to  heroic  measures  also.  The  work 
of  discovering  America  was  done  by  great  ven¬ 
turers  for  three  hundred  years,  and  a  noble 
company  they  were — Cabot,  Hudson,  Raleigh, 
La  Salle,  Joliet;  some  of  them  cruel  and  hard 
as  DeSoto  and  Cortez ;  some  gentle  and  noble 
as  Pierre  Marquette.  Daniel  Boone,  and  Lewis 
and  Clark,  pushed  back  the  tangles  of  the  wil¬ 
derness  trail  and  rolled  up  the  curtain  on  a 
new  empire.  Not  until  the  Civil  War  was  the 
actual  exploration  of  America  complete. 

What  dimensions  this  task  had  is  very 
pointedly  indicated  in  the  remark  of  an  Eng¬ 
lishman  who  was  traveling  across  the  United 
States,  and  looking  at  it  from  the  platform  of 
an  observation  car.  After  five  days  solid  trav¬ 
eling,  as  he  looked  out  over  the  expanse  of 
California,  he  said  to  a  companion:  “They 
make  a  big  fuss  about  Columbus  discovering 
America.  But  really,  you  know,  it  is  so  big, 
I  don’t  see  how  he  could  help  it!” 

The  physical  process,  stupendous  as  it  was, 
was  only  the  beginning.  The  discovery  of 
America  was  a  great  spiritual  adventure  as 
well  as  a  physical  one.  The  Mayflower  also 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  127 


was  a  ship  of  discovery.  It  bumped  against 
more  than  a  new  continent.  It  struck  a  new 
idea,  a  new  conception  of  political  and  moral 
life. 

2.  George  Washington  discovered  America. 
In  the  affirmation  of  human  rights  which  he 
made  against  the  autocracy  of  the  German 
king  who  happened  to  be  sitting  on  the  Eng¬ 
lish  throne  he  helped  to  bring  into  being  a 
new  political  idea  and  a  new  force  for  freedom 
which  had  great  effect  in  the  Old  World  as 
well  as  in  the  New. 

He  discovered  that  America  was  more  than 
a  footnote  to  European  history.  It  was  more 
than  an  appendix  to  the  old  story  of  courts 
and  kings.  It  was  a  brand-new  volume  in  the 
collected  works  of  God. 

Washington  was  not  the  political  thinker 
of  American  independence.  But  he  was  the 
personal  force  which  made  the  new  discovery 
a  political  fact.  That  fact  was  given  new 
meaning  by  the  genius  of  Alexander  Hamil¬ 
ton,  who  from  the  bristling  antagonisms  of 
little  States  created  a  new  federal  power. 

The  discovery  was  completed  by  Daniel 
Webster.  It  is  the  fashion  to  discount  the 
rhetoric  of  Webster.  It  is  quite  out  of  style 


128 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


to-day,  but  it  is  a  very  great  blunder  to  sneer 
at  rhetoric.  Webster’s  great  phrases,  “Liberty 
and  union,  now  and  forever,”  were  more  than 
words.  They  led  out  the  American  people 
to  a  new  discovery  of  the  Union,  as  something 
other  and  greater  than  the  different  States. 
His  orations  were  a  great  welding  force  with¬ 
out  which  the  nation  could  not  have  stood  the 
shock  of  the  Civil  War. 

3.  Abraham  Lincoln  discovered  America .■ — 
An  America  neither  of  East  or  West,  North 
or  South,  nor  border,  nor  breed  nor  birth,  but 
a  great  people  brought  into  a  national  unity. 
He  was  as  real  a  discoverer  as  Columbus. 

Now  it  is  our  turn  to  discover  America, 
as  a  moral  and  spiritual  force  in  the  world. 
It  is  the  task  of  the  American  citizen  of  our 
time  to  bring  the  great  adventure  up  to  date, 
to  dig  beneath  the  surface  of  life  to  reach  the 
deepest  meaning  and  purpose  of  America. 
That  discovery  must  be  made  in  two  realms. 
We  must  get  a  new  and  larger  grasp  of  what 
the  moral  and  spiritual  quality  of  American 
civilization  ought  to  be  and  must  be.  We  must 
discover  and  fulfill  America’s  service  to  the 
world. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  129 


II 

We  must  discover  and  make  strong  the 
spiritual  forces  in  American  life .  The  mere 
uncovering  and  utilization  of  natural  resour¬ 
ces,  or  the  perfection  of  technique  are  not 
ends  in  themselves.  America  has  accomplished 
a  superb  achievement  in  both  of  these  realms, 
but  that  is  merely  the  foundation  of  the  house. 
Engineering  is  an  instrument  not  of  the  flesh 
but  of  the  spirit,  and  is  ennobled  only  by  noble 
purposes.  What  is  the  point  to  the  saving  of 
life  by  science  and  the  invention  of  labor-sav¬ 
ing  devices,  if  health  and  leisure  are  only  to 
be  used  in  material  convenience  and  gratifi¬ 
cation?  What  is  the  point  to  even  the  swiftest 
progress  which  has  no  purpose  but  speeding 
up?  Walter  Lippmann  emphasizes  the  spir¬ 
itual  blankness  of  mere  growth  and  “progress” 
when  he  says  in  Public  Opinion : 

An  American  will  endure  almost  any  insult  except 
the  charge  that  he  is  not  progressive.  Be  he  of  long 
native  ancestry,  or  a  recent  immigrant,  the  aspect  that 
has  always  struck  his  eye  is  the  immense  physical 
growth  of  American  civilization.  That  constitutes  a 
fundamental  stereotype  through  which  he  views  the 
world;  the  country  village  will  become  the  great  me¬ 
tropolis,  the  modest  building  a  skyscraper;  what  is 
small  shall  be  big;  what  is  slow  shall  be  fast;  what  is 


130 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


poor  shall  be  rich;  what  is  few  shall  be  many;  what¬ 
ever  it  is  it  shall  be  more  so.8 


Who’s  Who  in  America  is  a  very  useful 
book,  but  a  far  more  useful  one  would  be  an 
authoritative  handbook  on  “What’s  What  in 
America !” 

What  does  America  mean  to  us?  What 
have  wre  discovered  as  its  goal — the  end  which 
its  life  should  express — the  resulting  quality 
of  life  which  should  make  all  its  toil  and 
material  achievements  worth  while?  It  is 
both  an  inspiration  and  a  rebuke  to  recall 
what  America  has  meant  to  foreign  eyes,  as 
they  have  picked  out  what  seems  its  essential 
meaning.  Stephen  Graham  has  listed  a  few 
of  these  impressions : 

To  Ibsen  America  was  the  button  molder’s  pot,  where 
the  Scandinavian  peasant  was  melted  up  with  Tom, 
Dick  and  Harry  into  some  one  else,  a  second  tryout 
for  human  material.  To  Zangwill,  borrowing  the  idea 
from  Ibsen,  America  w~as  “The  Melting  Pot”  where 
Jews  were  melted  down.  To  Mary  Antin  America  was 
the  Promised  Land  of  the  Jews,  though  to  do  her 
justice  her  famous  book  was  written  before  the  Bol¬ 
shevik  revolution  and  the  entry  of  America  into  a 
European  war.  To  Maxim  Gorky  America  was  the 
country  of  gleaming  teeth  and  mirthless  smiles.  To 

3  Reprinted  by  permission.  Copyright,  1922,  by  Harcourt,  Brace  & 
Company,  Inc. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  131 


the  present  writer  America  was  the  living  West  as 
compared  with  Russia,  the  living  East — the  country  of 
humanitarianism  and  all  that  I  have  called  the  “Way  of 
Martha.”  To  H.  G.  Wells,  America  represents  the  fu¬ 
ture  of  civilization;  to  Arnold  Bennett,  the  future  of 
upholstery. 

In  that  last  contrast — of  America  as  either 
the  future  of  mankind  or  the  future  of  uphol¬ 
stery — is  the  issue  which  is  being  steadily 
worked  out  day  by  day.  To  discover  the  soul 
of  America  and  set  it  on  top  of  the  machinery 
with  its  hand  on  the  lever,  is  the  chapter  in 
that  long  romance  of  discovery  which  must 
be  written.  What  shall  it  profit  a  nation  if 
it  gain  the  whole  world  of  technical  power 
and  lose  it’s  own  life?  Carlyle  has  reminded 
us  in  his  French  Revolution  that 

Seldom  do  we  find  that  a  whole  people  can  he  said  to 
have  any  faith  at  all  except  in  things  they  can  eat  and 
handle.  Whenever  it  gets  any  faith,  its  history  becomes 
soul-stirring,  noteworthy. 

History  cannot  be  made  soul-stirring  by  real 
estate  or  bank  deposits,  by  Bessemer  convert¬ 
ers  or  Hoe  presses. 

New  York  boasts  that  its  “personalty”  to¬ 
tals  up  to  sixty  billions.  A  large  sum.  But 
what  is  its  personality  worth?  A  man  whose 


132 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


personal  property  adds  up  to  a  million  but 
whose  personality  totals  only  about  thirty 
cents  is  a  pauper.  He  will  never  become  a 
public  charge.  But  he  is  already  something 
infinitely  worse — a  public  menace. 

Canon  Barnett,  while  always  keen  in  fur¬ 
thering  social  and  other  reforms,  realized  that 
the  supreme  problem  in  any  nation  is  “how 
to  spiritualize  the  forces  that  are  shaping  the 
future,  how  to  open  channels  between  eternal 
sources  and  every  day’s  need.” 

In  1921  the  United  States  government  made 
large  improvements  along  the  water-front  of 
Plymouth,  Massachusetts,  the  central  feature 
of  which  was  the  resetting  of  Plymouth  Rock. 
That  rock,  which  has  been  a  shrine  for  cen¬ 
turies,  was  reset  in  a  new  place.  What  was 
done  with  that  old  bowlder  is  a  striking  pic¬ 
ture  of  what  should  be  done  with  the  things 
for  which  Plymouth  Rock  stands.  The  ideals 
of  the  Puritan  need  to  be  reset  in  the  center 
of  our  American  life. 

This  is  not  to  expect  or  to  desire  in  any 
way  that  the  laws  and  regulations  and  intol¬ 
erances  of  the  Puritan  be  called  back  to  vex  us. 
But  it  does  mean  that  the  great  truths  which 
shone  out  in  his  thinking  be  given  a  new  place 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  133 


in  our  thinking  to-day.  Among  those  truths 
which  gleam  like  pilot  stars  are  these:  that 
life  is  a  spiritual  enterprise;  that  life  is  dis¬ 
tinguished  in  proportion  to  its  expression  of 
high  and  noble  purpose ;  that  government  is  a 
moral  enterprise  which  has  direct  responsibili¬ 
ties  both  to  the  people  who  live  under  it  and 
to  the  God  who  reigns  above  it;  that  every 
human  soul  has  an  infinite  value  and  an  unde¬ 
niable  right  to  freedom. 

It  is  only  by  the  reassertion  of  these  ele¬ 
mentary  truths  of  the  spiritual  world  that  we 
will  ever  dominate  the  marvelous  machinery 
which  our  scientific  and  industrial  age  has 
created.  Unless  we  can  put  the  soul  above  the 
machine  we  will  be  the  slaves  of  the  machine. 
In  the  processes  of  industry  “the  American 
idea”  in  our  time  must  mean  that  the  man  is 
of  infinitely  more  value  than  the  product,  and 
that  human  rights  must  always  precede  prop¬ 
erty  rights. 

Our  text,  “Possess  thou  the  West,”  was  a 
direction  given  to  one  of  the  tribes  of  Israel 
in  the  portioning  of  the  land  of  Canaan.  It 
had  no  other  significance.  But  it  may  well 
serve  as  a  watchword  for  the  Christian  enter¬ 
prise  in  America  to-day — “Possess  thou  the 


134 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


West.”  For  just  as  truly  as  God  first  said 
to  men  “Have  dominion,”  lie  is  saying  to-day 
to  his  children,  “Possess  thou  the  West.” 
Take  this  marvelous  wonderland  which  has 
been  the  last  to  be  revealed  in  the  uncovering 
of  the  Western  world  and  possess  it  as  the 
home  of  the  kingdom  of  God — the  organized 
expression  of  the  ideals  and  purposes  of 
Jesus  Christ. 


Ill 

To-day’s  compelling  adventure  is  the  new 
discovery  of  America  as  a  force  for  world 
service . 

World  redemption  is  not  too  strong  a  word 
for  the  need.  Since  the  breaking  up  of  the 
so-called  Peace  conference  (what  a  bitter 
irony  in  the  name!)  the  United  States  has  dis¬ 
appeared  from  world  cooperation  like  the  sink¬ 
ing  of  the  fabled  continent  of  Atlantis.  In 
these  years  of  staggering  need,  when  Europe 
has  been  sinking  lower  and  lower  in  the  quick¬ 
sands  of  economic  prostration,  physical  ex¬ 
haustion,  and  spiritual  despair,  we  have  shied 
back  in  selfish  fright  from  what  we  have  com¬ 
placently  termed  “foreign  entanglements.” 
We  have  forgotten  that  the  worst  entangle- 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  135 


ment  of  all  is  that  calamity  of  other  nations 
which  will  inevitably  draw  us  down  into  mis¬ 
fortune  and  suffering  with  them,  no  matter 
how  unceasingly  we  babble  our  outworn  poli¬ 
tical  shibboleths.  For  the  suffering  of  Europe 
we  have  generously  tithed  the  mint,  anise, 
and  cummin  of  individual  contributions  of 
many  millions.  Let  this  touching  expression 
of  the  sympathy  of  Americans  ever  receive  all 
the  praise  which  it  justly  calls  forth.  But 
we  have  omitted  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
law — the  cooperation  which  alone  would  make 
possible  the  recovery  of  Europe  from  post-war 
paralysis,  and  the  end  of  the  reign  of  terror  in 
the  Near  East.  A  war-engendered  weariness, 
coupled  with  ill-timed  partisanship  has  lain 
like  a  palsy  on  generous  and  manly  American 
achievements.  The  corner  stone  of  American 
foreign  policy  has  been  the  doctrine  of  the 
Great  Refusal,  immortalized  by  the  rich  young 
ruler.  At  all  gatherings  of  the  nations  to 
struggle  with  the  almost  hopeless  problems  of 
international  welfare,  America  has  been  rep¬ 
resented  by  the  Vacant  Chair.  That  Vacant 
Chair,  as  an  expression  of  the  spiritual  atti¬ 
tude  of  America,  has  been  well  described  in 
the  words  of  Rabbi  Stephen  S,  Wise ; 


136 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


What  Europe  needs  to  get  and  America  requires  to 
grant  is  not  a  cancellation  of  unpayable  debts,  but  a 
cancellation  of  the  new  un-American  attitude  on  the 
part  of  America — that  attitude  which  utters  itself  in 
the  vulgarism  and  moral  vulgarity  of  “we’re  through 
with  Europe.”  The  business  of  America  in  this  hour 
is  to  cancel  its  attitude  of  austere  and  unbrotherly 
indifference  to  the  fate  of  Europe. 

One  of  the  pathetic  things  at  every  meeting 
of  the  League  of  Nations  is  the  fact  that  in 
sending  for  information  from  the  different 
countries  relating  to  such  activities  of  the 
League,  as  the  repression  of  the  opium  and 
white-slave  traffic  and  the  private  traffic  in 
arms  and  munitions,  time  after  time  the  docu¬ 
ments  of  the  League  bore  the  record,  “No 
answer  from  the  United  States.”  They  are 
words  of  shame  that  ought  to  sear  the  Chris¬ 
tian  conscience. 

We  smile  at  the  quaint  maps  of  the  Middle 
Ages  with  their  grotesque  caricatures  of  the 
realities  of  world  geography.  But  are  they 
any  more  quaint  and  grotesque  than  the  map 
of  the  world  as  it  has  existed  in  the  minds  of 
many  Americans,  including  a  number  in  the 
Senate,  for  the  past  four  years — merely  a 
hemisphere!  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
hemisphere.  God  made  a  globe.  He  made  it 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  137 


of  one  piece.  And  what  God  hath  joined  to¬ 
gether  no  man,  nor  any  irreconcilable  group 
of  senatorical  “die-hards,”  can  put  asunder. 
The  very  conditions  of  modern  life,  as  well 
as  the  will  of  God,  have  joined  the  nations  to¬ 
gether,  for  richer,  for  poorer,  for  better,  for 
worse,  in  sickness  and  in  health,  as  long  as 
they  shall  live.  It  is  striking  to-day  that  the 
farmers  of  our  country  are  beginning  to  grow 
weary  of  the  “splendid  isolation”  that  was  so 
alluring  to  many  of  them  a  short  time  ago. 
They  are  beginning  to  have  a  suspicion  that 
the  impoverishment  of  Europe  has  a  rather 
direct  relation  to  the  price  of  wheat  in  the 
United  States.  The  agricultural  depression 
is  a  working  out  in  the  economic  world  of  the 
truth  of  God,  once  put  in  a  powerful  agricul¬ 
tural  figure  of  speech,  “Whatsoever  a  man 
soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap.”  God  is  not 
mocked.  The  nation  that  soweth  to  selfish  iso¬ 
lation  shall  of  that  isolation  reap  poverty. 

We  must  rediscover  America  among  the  na¬ 
tions  of  the  world.  We  have  sung  quite  long 
enough  as  our  national  anthem,  the  miserable 
ditty,  “Let  the  Rest  of  the  World  Go  By.”  God 
forbid  that  we  should  choose  as  our  role  in  the 
world  drama  that  of  the  modern  Shylock  who 


138 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


whets  the  knife  of  his  advantages  and  hoarsely 
demands  his  pound  of  debt. 

In  the  councils  of  the  world  we  have  sought 
to  be  merely  an  “unofficial  observer.”  Inglo¬ 
rious  rule !  We  must  not  forget  that  the  classic 
example  of  one  who  tried  to  be  an  “unofficial 
observer”  is  Pontius  Pilate.  “This  is  no  busi¬ 
ness  of  mine,”  he  whimpers,  as  he  washes  his 
hands  the  third  time.  And  to  that  specious 
plea  of  innocence,  the  world  has  thundered 
back  for  nineteen  centuries  its  answer,  “ Cruci¬ 
fied  by  Pontius  Pilate .” 

Thank  God,  there  are  many  signs  that  we 
are  coming  out  of  unsplendid  isolation  into  a 
shoulder-to-shoulder  fellowship  with  Europe 
in  the  tasks  of  salvaging  civilization.  It  is 
not  the  responsibility  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
to  present  to  the  government  the  exact  state¬ 
ment  of  dollars  and  cents  it  shall  exact  on  the 
European  debt  or  extend  in  credits.  But  it  is 
emphatically  the  business  of  Christians  to 
point  out  to  their  government  the  way  of  inter¬ 
national  cooperation,  and  say  with  the  thun¬ 
der  of  a  quickened  conscience:  “This  is  the 
way.  Walk  ye  in  it,” 

For  we  bear,  as  Christians,  the  name  of  One 
who  was  not  afraid  of  world  entanglements. 


IX 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION 

“By  faith  Abraham  went  forth ,  although  he 
did  not  know  where  he  was  to  go” — 
Hebrews  11.  8 

“Let  my  people  go!” — Exodus  5.  1 

THE  principal  trouble  with  “the  old-time 
religion,”  as  that  phrase  is  frequently 
understood,  is  that  it  is  not  old  enough!  We 
are  all  familiar  with  the  song,  usually  pealed 
out  in  lusty  tones : 

“Give  to  me  the  old-time  religion, 

It’s  good  enough  for  me! 

It  was  good  enough  for  Moses, 

It  was  good  enough  for  father, 

It  was  good  enough  for  mother, 

And  it’s  good  enough  for  me!” 

What  a  man  who  sings  that  song  is  clamor¬ 
ing  for,  when  it  is  anything  more  than  an  emo¬ 
tional  outlet,  is  not  nearly  so  old  as  he  thinks 
it  is.  He  is  usually  thinking  of  the  exact  form 
of  religious  expression  and  practice  familiar 

139 


140 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


to  him  as  a  boy.  And  that  is  a  very  modern 
invention,  comparatively  speaking. 

The  particular  combination  of  ideas  and 
customs  which  is  dignified  by  the  title  of  “old- 
time  religion”  is  frequently  like  one  of  the 
modern  spurious  paintings  passed  off  on  the 
uninitiated  as  an  “old  master.”  It  is  not  a 
genuine  “antique,”  which  dates  back  to  the 
creative  days  of  the  faith,  but  a  local  version 
which  flourished  about  1850,  or  at  best  in  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  This  whole 
sermon  can  be  put  into  one  sentence :  If  you 
want  the  “old-time  religion” — and  nothing  is 
so  desperately  needed  by  the  world  to-day — 
be  sure  you  get  it  old  enough.  Do  not  run 
back  into  the  sixteenth  century  and  stop  there. 
Insist  on  the  real  thing.  Go  clear  back  to  the 
beginning. 

Notice  swiftly  three  things  about  the  fre¬ 
quent  longing  for  “the  old-time  religion”  with 
its  inevitable  implied  disparagement  of  the 
Christian  faith  of  the  present  day. 

First,  the  sighing  for  the  religion  of  yes¬ 
terday  is  a  delusion.  Of  course  religion  ought 
to  be  old.  It  can’t  be  worth  much  if  it  is  not. 
The  sun  which  lights  the  earth  was  not  made 
yesterday.  The  hills  which  give  birth  to  the 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  141 


streams  which  water  the  earth  are  not  a  twen¬ 
tieth-century  product.  When  we  wish  to  mark 
a  thing  as  being  really  old  we  can  say  nothing 
so  strong  as  that  it  is  as  “old  as  the  hills.”  A 
religion  to  be  worth  anything  must  be  so  old 
as  to  be  timeless.  This  truth  is  expressed  in 
one  of  the  most  picturesque  and  suggestive 
titles  of  God  in  the  Old  Testament,  “The  An¬ 
cient  of  Days.”  It  is  only  when  we  can  say, 
“Lord,  thou  hast  been  our  dwelling  place  in 
all  generations,”  that  we  feel  the  lifting  power 
of  faith. 

But  while  all  that  is  eternally  true  usually 
the  cry  for  the  old-time  religion  is  not  a  thirst¬ 
ing  for  the  universal,  timeless  elements  of 
religion — those  large  aspects  of  Christian 
truth  which  are  the  same  yesterday,  to-day, 
and  forever.  It  is,  rather,  for  those  local  and 
temporary  forms  which  have  become  stereo¬ 
types  of  the  mind.  And  the  paradoxical  thing 
about  it  is  that  those  particular  interpreta¬ 
tions  which  are  revered  as  being  old  are  com¬ 
parative  novelties.  The  rampant  fundamen¬ 
talist,  for  instance,  seeking  whom  he  may 
devour,  who  regards  any  interpretation  of 
Christ  more  liberal  than  his  own  as  one  of 
Satan’s  masterpieces,  is  not  merely  so  much 


142 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


concerned  oyer  the  triumph  of  the  Spirit  of 
Christ,  as  oyer  his  success  in  ramming  his  own 
dogma  down  people’s  throats.  He  labels  as 
“the  old-time  religion”  a  belief  in  the  verbal 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures.  That  particular 
belief  is  really  quite  a  new-fangled  idea,  as 
any  student  of  the  history  of  Scripture  knows. 

Many,  if  not  most,  of  those  who  declare 
that  the  old-time  religion,  which  was  good 
enough  for  Moses,  for  father,  for  mother,  and 
for  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego,  and  is 
consequently  good  enough  for  them,  identify  it 
with  the  theological  interpretations  and  even 
with  the  science  ( there  lies  the  rub ! )  held  in 
certain  localities  two  generations  ago.  Their 
attitude  of  mind  is  exactly  like  that  of  the  old 
lady  who  bitterly  opposed  the  stained-glass 
windows  in  the  new  church,  saying  that  she 
preferred  the  glass  “just  as  God  made  it.” 
Both  glass  and  theology  are  made  out  of  ele¬ 
ments  supplied  by  God.  But  neither  comes 
directly  from  the  hand  of  the  Almighty. 

This  vociferous  cry  for  the  old-time  religion 
is  an  evasion.  The  chorus,  “Give  me  the  old- 
time  religion”  is  one  in  which  many  join.  The 
big  business  man,  in  disgust  and  despair  over 
an  impertinent,  unobsequious,  social  type  of 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  143 


religion  which  comes  into  his  office  and  asks, 
“What  per  cent  do  you  make  on  your  invest¬ 
ments?” — “How  much  of  vour  stock  is  wa- 
tered?” — “How  much  do  yon  pay  your  em¬ 
ployees?”  cries  passionately,  “Give  me  the  old- 
time  religion!”  It  was  much  easier  to  get 
along  with.  As  long  as  he  subscribed  to  the 
fund  for  the  relief  of  worn-out  preachers,  it 
did  not  interfere  very  much  with  his  business. 
To-day  many  business  men’s  associations  are 
trying  to  say  with  a  boycott  on  those  organi¬ 
zations  which  dare  to  advocate  putting  Chris¬ 
tianity  into  practice,  “The  old-time  religion  is 
good  enough  for  me!” 

To  the  man  looking  out  on  a  perplexing 
world  with  its  new  scientific  understanding 
and  social  emphasis,  the  simple,  individual¬ 
istic,  emotional  religion  of  two  generations 
ago  was  ever  so  much  easier  to  get  adjusted 
to.  Earth  is  so  much  more  bothersome  than 
heaven !  So  the  man  who  does  not  like  to  mix 
thought  with  his  religion  looks  back  longingly 
to  the  days  when  it  was  considered  sufficient 
merely  to  sing  about  it. 

The  unintelligent  sigh  for  yesterday’s  reli¬ 
gion  is  a  repression  of  to-day’s  neiv  insight .  It 
says  lazily,  “The  old  is  better.”  Back  to 


144 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


grandfather’s  world  and  to  grandmother’s 
Bible!  Such  a  blind  appeal  to  the  near  past 
and  the  local  past  strangles  every  new  birth 
of  conscience.  Nothing  could  be  more  destruc¬ 
tive  of  a  genuine  and  creative  faith  than  to 
model  manners  and  morals  and  convictions  by 
the  standards  of  yesterday.  Some  one  has 
said  regarding  Southern  novels  that  too  many 
Southern  authors  squatted  about  in  military 
cemeteries  to  write  their  books.  A  good  many 
religious  books  have  been  written  in  military 
cemeteries!  Their  chief  themes  are 

“Old,  unhappy,  far-off  things 
And  battles  long  ago.” 

When  we  stay  in  the  cemetery  too  long  we 
catch  a  cold  and  rigor  mortis  sets  in.  It  has 
been  well  pointed  out  by  George  Adam  Smith 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  not  obstructed  by 
being  blown  up,  but  by  being  sat  upon.  The 
most  effective  way  of  sitting  upon  the  king¬ 
dom  of  God  to-day  is  to  begin  to  sing  about 
the  old-time  religion. 

The  emphasis  so  far  has  been  negative.  But 
I  would  like  to  make  one  as  emphatically  posi¬ 
tive  as  I  may  and  plead  for  the  old-time  reli¬ 
gion  as  earnestly  as  any  camp  meeting  exhorter 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  145 


might.  My  only  concern  is  that  it  be  the 
genuine  article! 

Leap  the  centuries  and  you  will  find  two 
things. 

I 

The  old-time  religion  is  the  religion  of 
Abraham — a  religion  of  intellectual  and  spir¬ 
itual  daring.  The  “old-time  religion”  of  his 
day  was  not  good  enough  for  Abraham.  Not 
by  a  thousand  miles !  He  traveled  that  far  to 
Canaan  to  find  one  good  enough.  The  religion 
which  really  is  old  is  not  a  mechanical  per¬ 
petuation  of  the  dead  forms  of  other  days.  It 
is  pioneering  for  God  into  new  fields  and  new 
days.  Abraham  went  forth  although  he  did 
not  know  where  he  was  to  go.  Had  he  fol¬ 
lowed  the  practice  of  many  to-day,  he  would 
have  answered  God’s  call  to  venture  forth  by 
a  timorous  “No  thank  you.  Ur  suits  me  all 
right.  The  old-time  religion  is  good  enough 
for  me!” 

He  walked  west  with  God,  even  when  that 
daring  exploit  took  him  directly  in  the  face  of 
every  time-honored  and  revered  orthodoxy  of 
his  neighbors. 

What  a  venture  it  was!  Professor  F.  H. 


146 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Giddings  asks  an  unusual  but  fascinating 
question,  “Why  was  there  ever  any  history  at 
all?”  It  is  well  worth  thinking  about.  Why 
did  anything  ever  happen  that  made  events  to 
be  recorded?  Why  was  not  the  record  of  the 
race  simply  one  long  afternoon  of  cattle  graz¬ 
ing,  in  which  all  history  could  be  summed  up 
in  one  inglorious  word — “ditto”?  The  answer 
is  that  history  was  made  by  the  adventurers. 
The  Order  of  the  Sons  of  Abraham  created 
history.  They  have  made  the  history  of  reli¬ 
gion,  beginning  with  Abraham  and  going  on  up 
through  the  prophets,  on  and  up  until  there 
comes  that  utterly  reckless  Innovator,  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  who  announces  in  a  perfectly 
scandalous  way,  “Ye  have  heard  it  said  of  old, 
.  .  .  but  I  say  unto  you.”  Any  future  his¬ 

tory  of  Christianity  worth  recording  will  come 
from  the  same  source — from  men  daring 
enough  to  push  out  into  the  world  of  thought 
and  life,  to  adapt  Christianity  to  the  needs  and 
temper  of  their  time,  men  who  dare  to  strip 
the  husk  from  the  kernel  of  truth  and  sepa¬ 
rate  the  accidental  from  the  essential. 

General  Smuts,  in  that  noble  figure  of  speech 
derived  from  Abraham  himself,  said,  “Human¬ 
ity  has  struck  its  tents  and  is  on  the  march.” 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  147 


It  is  a  tragedy  if  the  church  is  left  behind 
in  a  walled  city.  O  for  a  baptism  of  that  old- 
time  religion  of  Abraham !  Will  Christianity 
go  before  this  moving  column  of  men  as  a 
pillar  of  fire,  or  will  it  be  left  behind  like  a 
collection  of  pyramids  in  ancient  Egypt,  dedi¬ 
cated  to  the  past,  peopled  by  mummies?  Will 
the  church  have  intellectual  daring  enough 
to  make  itself  and  its  message  at  home 
in  the  new  intellectual  world  we  live  in?  Will 
it  have  the  spiritual  daring  of  Abraham  to  re¬ 
spond  to  the  call  of  God  which  comes  through 
the  needs  of  the  world  to-day,  “Get  thee  out?” 
Get  thee  out  of  the  familiar  and  comfortable 
ruts  of  custom,  out  of  the  smug  little  dog¬ 
matisms  which  make  void  the  Word  of  God 
through  the  accumulated  tradition  of  unessen¬ 
tial  trifles !  Get  thee  out  of  the  world  of  petty 
ecclesiastical  red  tape  and  into  the  promised 
land  of  great  fundamental  human  needs ! 
Maude  Royden  has  graphically  pictured  the 
failure  of  negative,  conventional  traditions  to 
meet  deep  human  needs  when  she  tells  of  a 
friend  of  hers  who  was  hungering  for  some 
explanation  of  the  meaning  of  pain  and  sor¬ 
row,  and  who  went  to  the  church  only  to  be 
told  that  one  must  not  marry  his  deceased 


148 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


wife’s  sister !  Since  the  war  in  America  there 
has  been  a  widespread  theological  reaction 
depressing  in  the  extreme.  An  ignorant  ob¬ 
scurantism,  the  deadliest  enemy  which  Chris¬ 
tianity  faces,  is  trying  to  identify  Christianity 
in  the  minds  of  millions  of  people  with  adher¬ 
ence  to  wholly  impossible  and  grotesque  views 
of  science  and  history.  This,  of  course,  is  only 
a  temporary  backwash  of  the  war.  Already 
signs  appear  that  it  has  reached  the  ebb  tide, 
just  as  the  other  reactions  due  to  the  war  in 
economics  and  politics  are  being  exhausted. 
An  overdose  of  “normalcy”  is  turning  bitter 
in  the  mouth. 

Let  us  bring  that  question  back  to  the  indi¬ 
vidual.  Can  we  ourselves  keep  step  with 
Abraham?  Have  we  the  “old-time  religion” 
which  can  cling  to  the  great  realities  of  the 
spiritual  life  and  leave  unessential  and  irrele¬ 
vant  things  behind,  as  Abraham  left  the  tradi¬ 
tions  of  Ur?  It  is  only  as  we  commend  our 
faith  to  the  mind  of  the  time  that  we  can 
ever  hope  to  have  it  command  the  time. 

Abraham  Lincoln  has  left  the  church  a  noble 
watchword : 

The  dogmas  of  the  quiet  past  are  inadequate  to  the 
stormy  present.  The  occasion  is  piled  high  with  difflh 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  149 


culty  and  we  must  rise  to  the  occasion.  As  our  case 
is  new,  so  must  we  think  anew  and  act  anew.  We 
must  disenthrall  ourselves  and  then  we  shall  save 
our  country. 

Consider  two  concrete  examples.  There  is 
no  realm  where  this  daring  is  so  needed  as  in 
the  crusade  against  war .  One  would  think 
that  the  whole  force  of  the  church  would  be 
violently  thrown  against  war.  But  actually 
nothing  of  the  kind  has  taken  place.  There 
are  a  thousand  resolutions  passed,  a  .million 
Christmas  sermons  on  the  Prince  of  Peace, 
but  to  take  a  positive  stand  against  war — all 
war — still  demands  the  spirit  and  daring  of  a 
martyr.  It  is  easy  to  be  against  war  until  a 
tense  situation  arises.  Then  the  spirit  of  na¬ 
tionalism  throttles  the  spirit  of  Christ.  There 
is  no  hope  for  the  world  unless  the  Church 
of  Christ  sets  its  face  against  war  like  a  flint 
and  is  willing  to  sacrifice  daringly  for  the  goal 
of  a  warless  world.  It  has  been  well  sug¬ 
gested  that  we  ought  to  add  one  more  com¬ 
mandment  to  our  Decalogue,  “Thou  shalt  not 
make  the  next  war  holy.” 

In  the  realm  of  church  unity  the  definite 
call  comes  to  get  out  of  the  old  habitations 
into  the  promised  land.  Can  we  move  out  of 


150 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


our  isolated  and  complacent  sectarianism  into 
genuine  working  federation?  There  is  little 
hope  of  the  church  exerting  any  commanding 
influence  in  national  life  when  it  asks  the 
world  to  listen  to  the  clamorous  disputes  of  a 
debating  society,  instead  of  to  the  voice  of 
the  Christian  Church.  “What  army,”  asks 
Macaulay,  “commanded  by  a  debating  society 
ever  achieved  anything  but  disgrace?”  We 
have  finally  learned  how  unity  of  command 
on  the  Western  Front  during  the  war  was 
brought  about.  It  was  not  by  any  far-visioned 
strategy  of  the  leaders,  nor  by  any  broad  wis¬ 
dom  of  the  government.  It  was  brought 
about  by  only  one  thing — the  drive  of  Hinden- 
burg’s  army  in  the  spring  of  1918,  which 
threatened  to  end  the  war  any  day  with  a  Ger¬ 
man  victory.  That  gigantic  and  perilous  on¬ 
slaught  did  what  nothing  else  could  do — it 
swept  away  national  jealousies  and  welded  all 
the  fighting  forces  into  one  single  swinging 
sword.  Perhaps  that  is  just  what  is  happen¬ 
ing  to  the  church  before  our  eyes.  Perhaps 
we  ought  to  be  down  on  our  knees  thanking 
God  for  the  desperate  situation  of  the  world 
to-day  if  that  situation  actually  brings  the 
working  unity  of  all  the  soldiers  of  Christ. 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  151 


II 

The  old-time  religion  was  the  religion  of 
Moses — a  religion  of  social  revolution .  Per¬ 
haps  “revolution”  is  a  strong  word.  So  be  it. 
The  religion  of  Moses  was  a  strong  thing.  It 
was  a  blazing  conviction  which  thundered  at 
the  established  order  in  Egypt,  in  behalf  of 
the  depressed,  defrauded,  exploited  people, 
the  command,  “Let  my  people  go !”  The  famil¬ 
iar  hymn  of  praise  to  the  old-time  religion 
has  one  line  which  declares,  “It  was  good 
enough  for  Moses.”  That  is  an  unmitigated 
slander.  After  his  vision  of  God  in  the  desert 
Moses  was  not  content  with  any  worn  con¬ 
ventionalities.  He  had  learned  that  the  will 
'  of  God  meant  the  release  of  the  toilers,  the 
bondsmen.  The  social  gospel  is  not  any  new 
thing.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest  things  in  the 
Bible.  It  was  one  of  the  first  results  of  the 
vision  of  God  which  came  to  Moses.  And  any 
religion  which  does  not  have  that  social  vision 
and  throbbing  sympathy  for  men  at  its  very 
center  can  have  any  claim  to  being  an  old-time 
religion.  It  is  a  pale,  bloodless  modern 
substitute. 

“Give  me  the  old-time  religion!”  Let  the 


152 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


world  hear  from  millions  of  Christian  voices 
the  echoes  of  the  command  of  God,  “Let  my 
people  go.”  Let  it  reverberate  through  the 
United  States,  now  left  without  adequate  pro¬ 
tection  for  its  children  against  the  exploita¬ 
tion  of  those  who  profit  by  child  labor.  Let 
it  sound  like  the  crack  of  doom  thundering 
in  the  ears  of  Pharaoh  in  those  States  where 
children  under  fourteen  years  of  age  are 
forced  to  labor  for  ten  to  twelve  hours  a  day 
under  the  shameful  permission  of  the  State. 
I  believe  that  adequate  protection  requires  a 
federal  amendment  prohibiting  child  labor. 
We  are  told  by  lawyers  that  we  ought  not  to 
“clutter  up  the  Constitution”  with  amend¬ 
ments.  But  let  us  repeat  in  high  seriousness 
a  remark  first  made  in  jest,  “What’s  the  Con¬ 
stitution  between  friends?”  What  is  the  Con¬ 
stitution  between  God  and  his  friends,  the 
children?  I  would  much  rather  see  the  Con¬ 
stitution  cluttered  up  with  a  dozen  more 
amendments  than  to  see  the  nation  cluttered 
up  with  a  million  undersized,  malformed  chil- 
dred  deprived  of  their  birthright  ! 

In  the  whole  world  of  industry  we  need  the 
old-time  religion  which  undertakes  to  trans¬ 
form  an  iniquitous  economic  order.  One  of 


THE  OLD  TIME  RELIGION  153 


the  largest  textile  mills  of  New  England  has 
been  closed  down  for  months  by  a  strike  which 
was  brought  about  by  its  announced  intention 
of  reducing  wages.  The  plea  of  the  company 
was  that  it  would  not  be  possible  to  continue 
to  pay  the  wages  and  stay  in  business.  Yet 
all  the  time  during  the  strike  it  has  been  pay¬ 
ing  on  its  stock  thirty  and  forty  per  cent. 
How  long  will  we  continue  to  allow  such  in¬ 
dustrial  housekeeping  to  go  on? 

We  must  dare  to  attack  the  king  of  the 
industrial  order.  The  king  in  his  purple  robes 
on  the  throne  is  the  profit  motive.  Society 
is  organized  around  the  wrong  center — on  the 
motive  of  acquisition.  The  only  remedy  that 
will  treat  society’s  sickness  is  to  organize  it 
around  the  motive  of  service.  And  the  first  step 
though  not  by  any  means  the  only  one,  but 
one  in  which  we  can  all  do  something  immed¬ 
iate,  is  to  show  the  world  a  group  of  men  and 
women  who  are  redeemed  from  the  domina¬ 
tion  of  the  profit  motive  in  their  own  lives. 

So  we  have  arrived  at  the  end — where  every 
sermon  should  find  its  journey’s  end — at  the 
feet  of  Jesus.  The  old-time  religion  is  the  re¬ 
ligion  of  Jesus — a  religion  of  active,  sacrificing 
love. 


154 


THE  HAUNTED 5  HOUSE 


The  Rev.  G.  A.  Studdert  Kennedy  has  well 
caught  the  spirit  of  that  eternal  appeal  of 
Jesus : 

“Passionately  fierce  the  voice  of  God  is  pleading, 
Pleading  with  men  to  arm  them  for  the  fight. 

See  how  those  hands,  majestically  bleeding, 

Call  us  to  rout  the  armies  of  the  night. 

Not  to  the  work  of  sordid,  selfish  saving 

Of  our  own  souls  to  dwell  with  him  on  high; 

But  to  the  soldier’s  splendid  selfless  braving 
Eager  to  fight  for  righteousness  and  die, 

Bread  of  thy  body  give  me  for  my  fighting, 

Give  me  to  drink  thy  sacred  blood  for  wine. 

While  there  are  wrongs  that  need  me  for  the  righting, 
While  there  is  warfare  splendid  and  divine.”1 

1  From  Poems ,  by  G.  A.  Studdert  Kennedy.  Reprinted  by  permission 
George  H.  Doran  Company. 


X 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM? 

“Remain  within  my  love  ”  —  John  15.  10 
(Moffatt’s  Translation) 

IN  other  words — move  in  and  live  there! 

A  remark  frequently  made  by  visitors  to 
New  York,  so  frequently  that  it  has  become 
part  of  the  great  American  ritual  of  trite  re¬ 
marks,  and  yet  always  spoken  with  an  air  of 
having  made  a  fresh  contribution  to  the 
world’s  wisdom  is  this:  “New  York  is  a  fine 
place  to  visit,  but  I  would  hate  to  live  there.” 
It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  words  which 
could  more  accurately  describe  the  attitude  of 
a  great  host  of  people  to  Christianity — “a  fine 
place  to  visit,  but  I  would  hate  to  live  there !” 
And  they  don’t ! 

Yet  Christianity  is  not  a  museum,  an  art 
gallery,  a  point  of  interest  to  be  visited.  It 
is  a  great  “living  room.”  The  thing  to  do 
with  it  is  to  live  in  it.  Yet  that  is  often  the 
last  thing  we  ever  think  of  doing  with  it.  We 

155 


156 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


talk  about  it,  we  measure  it,  we  visit  it  in  a 
sight-seeing  car,  we  photograph  it  and  paint  it, 
eulogize  and  disparage  it — do  everything  with 
it,  except  the  one  thing  it  was  designed  for — 
live  in  it. 

Jesus  said,  “ Abide  in  me.”  He  offered  the 
spacious  hospitality  of  his  truth  and  himself  to 
the  whole  race  as  a  “living  room.”  In  the 
very  suggestive  translation  of  Doctor  Moffatt, 
he  said,  “Kemain  within  my  love.”  Jesus  says 
to  us:  “Live  there.  Let  my  love  be  the  four 
walls  of  your  life,  close  and  dear  and  intimate 
enough  for  a  sheltered  hearthside;  wide  and 
far-ranging  enough  that  the  whole  family  of 
earth  may  find  place  within  it.” 

I 

A  recent  advertisement  trumpeted  forth  this 
wise  piece  of  advice :  “Make  your  parlor  into 
your  living  room  ”  It  is  counsel  which  runs 
far  beyond  the  realms  of  house  furnishing.  It 
enters  the  higher  branches  of  architecture — 
the  art  of  life  building.  Of  course  it  is  good 
advice  in  the  realm  of  home  arrangement  and 
is  being  almost  universally  followed. 

One  reason  why  we  do  not  have  parlors 
any  more  is  that  no  one  can  afford  them. 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  157 


Space  is  too  costly  to  permit  the  extravagance 
of  a  glorified  best  room  in  the  grand  manner 
of  a  generation  ago.  But  beyond  the  economic 
compulsion  the  passing  of  the  parlor  is  due  to 
a  blessed  baptism  of  common  sense.  We  have 
come  to  see  the  ridiculous  waste  of  setting 
aside  the  largest,  sunniest,  best-located  room 
in  the  house  as  a  sort  of  mausoleum. 

Those  of  you  who  have  never  lived  in  New 
England  do  not  know  just  what  an  imposing 
institution  a  parlor  can  be.  But  to  those  who 
grew  up  anywhere  in  New  England  fond  mem¬ 
ory  brings  the  light  of  other  days,  and  the 
vision  of  the  uncompromising  dignity  of  the 
“front  room.” 

The  windows,  if  not  nailed,  might  as  well 
have  been.  They  had  not  been  opened  since 
the  Revolution.  The  shades  were  usually 
drawn,  and  the  horsehair  furniture  was  cov¬ 
ered  with  crocheted  doilies.  In  one  corner 
was  a  large  rubber  plant  or  a  stuffed  owl  and 
in  the  other  a  “square”  piano,  “like  the  mon¬ 
strous  offspring  of  a'  pair  of  degenerate 
tables.”  The  wall  paper  had  a  pattern  of  red 
roses  and  silver  ribbon.  The  carpet  repeated 
the  red  roses,  adding  dogs  and  birds.  On  the 
mantel-piece  was  a  stuffed  bird  imprisoned 


158 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


under  a  glass  dome,  and  a  gold  clock  that  did 
not  and  would  not  go.  The  “whatnot”  in  the 
corner  was  covered  with  sea  shells  sighing 
melodiously. 

The  parlor  was  reserved  for  special  occa¬ 
sions,  for  funerals,  or  when  the  minister  came 
to  call,  or  something  equally  painful.  Occa¬ 
sionally  some  one  entered  to  sweep  and  thus 
redistribute  the  dust  around  the  room,  but 
no  one  ever  lived  there.  It  was  not  much 
more  intimately  related  to  the  life  of  the  home 
than  was  the  “Blue  Room”  of  the  White 
House.  Meanwhile  the  family  huddled  to¬ 
gether  into  cramped  quarters  at  the  rear  of 
the  house — frequently  into  a  combination  din¬ 
ing  room  and  kitchen. 

What  a  triumph  of  grace  when  the  parlor 
becomes  convicted  of  sin,  and  is  converted  and 
leads  a  new  life  as  a  living  room — airy,  sunny, 
inviting,  cheerful  and  warm — a  center  of 
everyday  life !  Just  that  same  transformation 
is  what  many  need  to  make  in  their  religion. 
So  easily  we  get  into  the  habit  of  treating  our 
religion  as  a  parlor,  dedicated  to  occasional 
use,  beautiful  but  remote  from  the  day’s  toil 
and  thought. 

It  was  an  artistic  principle  of  that  master 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  159 


builder  and  artist,  William  Morris,  that  “every 
room  should  appear  as  if  it  were  to  be  lived 
in.”  A  dining  room,  he  said,  ought  not  to 
look  as  though  anyone  went  into  it  as  one 
went  into  a  dentist’s  chair  for  an  operation 
and  came  out  of  it  when  the  operation  was 
over.  A  drawing  room  ought  to  look  as  if  some 
kind  of  work  could  be  done  in  it  less  tiresome 
than  being  bored.  Yet  that  is  exactly  how  we 
often  treat  the  truths  of  Christianity — as  any¬ 
thing  but  a  place  to  live  in.  Such  an  attitude 
is  poor  household  art. 

What  a  place  to  live  in  the  gospel  is !  Where 
else  can  the  soul  find  that  mysterious  but 
authentic  feeling  of  home f  God  sent  his  Son 
in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh  to  change  crea¬ 
tion  from  a  house  to  a  home. 

There  is  a  familiar  line  of  Edgar  Guest’s, 
“It  takes  a  heap  o’  living  to  make  a  house  a 
home.” 

That  line  enshrines  a  deep  truth.  In  that 
beautiful  little  story  of  the  war,  The  Worn 
Doorstep,  the  author  says,  “There  is  a  fine  feel¬ 
ing  about  a  house  where  many  lives  have  been 
lived.”  In  a  high  and  reverent  sense  Jesus  did 
the  living  wThich  makes  this  house  of  earth  a 
home  for  homeless  men.  His  heart  revealed 


160 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


the  undying  love  of  the  Father,  that  love 
which  lights  a  cold  world  as  a  fireplace,  glow¬ 
ing  with  life-giving  warmth. 

What  chairs  there  are  in  the  living  room  of 
Christian  faith  where  weary  feet  find  rest! 
Sit  down  in  this — “Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that 
labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give 
you  rest;”  or  this — “He  careth  for  you.” 

What  windows  open  out  from  the  living 
room  of  the  gospel!  They  look  out  on  all 
humanity,  upon  adventurous  trails  of  service, 
windows 

“Opening  on  the  foam  of  perilous  seas 
And  faery  lands  forlorn.” 

With  this  living  room  of  your  Father’s  house 
yours  for  the  entering — why  live  anywhere 
else? 

II 

Look  over  the  rooms  a  moment  in  that  noble 
structure  of  faith,  so  familiar  to  us  all,  known 
as  the  Apostles’  Creed.  Look  at  the  magnifi¬ 
cent  sweep  of  this  room — “I  believe  in  God  the 
Father  Almighty!”  Here  is  a  man  who  be¬ 
lieves  in  God  the  Father  Almighty  at  exactly 
eleven  fifteen  a.  m.  every  Sunday  morning. 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  161 


For  that  is  the  hour  at  which  he  rises  with 
the  rest  of  the  congregation  to  repeat  the 
Creed.  He  believes  it  sincerely  at  that  time. 
But  he  doesn’t  remain  within  it.  On  Monday 
there  comes  into  his  life  some  unexpected  good 
fortune.  Does  his  first  thought  rush  out  in 
thanksgiving  to  God  the  Father  Almighty? 
Not  at  all.  God  was  connected  with  something 
that  happened  on  Sunday,  not  on  Monday.  On 
Tuesday  some  unforeseen  sorrow  sweeps  over 
him.  Does  the  remembrance  of  that  Father 
who  is  touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirm¬ 
ities  come  swiftly  to  him  as  his  support?  Not 
at  all.  On  Wednesday  he  meets  coming  sud¬ 
denly  around  the  corner  one  of  those  tempta¬ 
tions  that  leap  on  a  man  before  he  knows  what 
it  is  all  about.  Does  there  go  out  from  the 
depths  of  his  heart  a  swift  S.  O.  S. — “O  God, 
help  me  now!”?  All  these  things  would  hap¬ 
pen  naturally  if  a  man  lived  in  that  great 
room  of  faith.  What  has  happened  to  this 
man  who  repeats  the  Apostles’  Creed  on  Sun¬ 
day  is  that  he  has  made  a  quick  inspection  of 
the  parlor,  which  was  then  closed  up  for  the 
week. 

Christopher  Morley  says  keenly  that  “God 
ought  to  be  more  than  a  formula  on  Sundays  v 


162 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


and  an  oath  on  week  days.”  Move  into  that 
great  room.  Of  course  we  cannot  always  be 
thinking  of  God  any  more  than  we  can  keep 
our  eye  on  one  dot.  But  the  great  reality  of 
God  may  be  the  background  of  every  thought 
we  have,  just  as  the  Rocky  Mountains  with 
their  white  summits  are  the  background  of 
every  landscape  in  the  whole  State  of  Colo¬ 
rado.  So  from  hard  and  forbidding  streets  we 
can  lift  up  our  eyes  up  to  the  blue  hills  of  God 
the  Father,  whence  cometh  our  help. 

Look  into  another  room,  or  rather  the  same 
room  with  a  fuller  light — “I  believe  in  Jesus 
Christ  his  only  Son,  our  Lord.”  What  a  place 
to  live!  To  live  there  means  that  his  prin¬ 
ciples  become  our  actual  working  rules.  But 
we  frequently  make  his  principles  only  a  show 
parlor.  We  spend  our  time  somewhere  else. 
Samuel  McChord  Crothers  has  compared  our 
Christian  professions  to  a  polished  brass  poker 
which  stands  beside  the  fireplace.  The  poker 
shines  beautifully  in  its  stand,  but  it  is  not 
used  actually  to  poke  the  fire  with.  When  we 
actually  want  to  do  anything  to  the  fire,  we 
reach  around  the  corner  and  take  hold  of  a 
dirty,  crooked  iron  poker  and  stir  the  fire 
into  a  blaze.  So  we  keep  our  Christian  prin- 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  1G3 


ciples  highly  polished.  But  when  we  need  to 
get  anything  actually  done,  we  employ  some 
more  convenient  tools  covered  with  the  soot  of 
a  dirty  world. 

Our  public  principle  is  “Love  your  enemy” ; 
but  the  thing  which  we  actually  use  is  this: 
“Give  it  to  him  in  the  neck!”  We  put  in  our 
show  window,  “Love  never  faileth,”  but  our 
working  code  is,  “Better  try  force.”  We  pray 
publicly  for  cooperation;  our  private  view, 
however,  is  that  the  chief  end  of  man  is  to 
get  there  first. 

Our  parlor  is  Jesus.  Our  living  room, 
where  we  do  our  business,  is  the  law  of  supply 
and  demand,  or  the  comfortable  orthodoxy  of 
twenty  per  cent  profit ;  or  the  even  more  com¬ 
fortable  orthodoxy  of  forty  per  cent;  or  the 
smug  exclusiveness  of  “one  hundred  per  cent 
Americanism.”  We  mix  impossibles.  This 
was  beautifully  illustrated  in  a  recent  letter 
to  the  New  York  Nation  from  a  correspondent 
who  described  what  a  high-minded  organiza¬ 
tion  the  Klu  Klux  Klan  was.  He  writes,  “It  is 
an  organization  of  Protestant  Puritanism  and 
cultured  charity.  To  achieve  these  ideas,  tar 
and  feathers  can  be  used.”  Tar  and  feathers 
and  charity  made  a  wonderful  trio! 


164 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


The  great  art  of  living  is  just  that  of  bridg¬ 
ing  the  chasm  between  theory  and  practice. 

Ill 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson  once  declared,  “No 
man  can  truly  say  he  has  made  a  success  of 
life  until  he  has  written  at  the  top  of  his  jour¬ 
nal,  “Enter  God.”  That  entry  must  be  re¬ 
written  every  day.  To  master  the  secret  of 
the  art  of  remaining  within  the  love  of  God 
I  can  bring  no  patent  process  guaranteed  not 
to  fail.  I  can  only  bring  one  simple  though 
ancient  direction.  When  you  make  your  par¬ 
lor  into  your  living  room  you  simply  live  in 
it — that  is  the  chief  thing.  And  that  means 
in  our  religious  life  such  an  old-fashioned 
thing  as  prayer.  I  would  plead  with  all  the 
earnestness  I  can  summon  for  a  moment  of 
real  prayer  every  day.  I  do  not  care  when  or 
how  you  do  it.  Dean  Charles  R.  Brown  well 
says  that  “God  is  no  respecter  of  posture,  nor 
does  he  have  much  use  for  the  clock.”  The 
chances  are  that  in  our  efforts  to  achieve  a 
new  reality  in  our  religious  life,  the  more  un¬ 
usual  the  time  and  place,  the  more  real  our 
communion  with  God  will  be.  All  over  this 
broad  land  of  ours  there  are  thousands  of 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  165 


people  who  are  strenuously  going  through  the 
“Daily  Dozen” — a  set  of  exercises  for  the  sake 
of  a  better  national  waist  line  and  better 
health.  Think  of  the  possibilities  locked  up 
within  a  “daily  dozen”  moments  given  every 
day  to  real  fellowship  with  God  and  adjust¬ 
ment  of  our  wills  to  his  purpose! 

Recently  I  fell  into  a  conversation  on  the 
train  with  a  fellow-commuter  as  the  train  en¬ 
tered  the  four  dark,  smoky  tunnels  that  must 
be  passed  through  before  Jersey  City  is 
reached. 

I  said  to  him,  “These  tunnels  are  an  awful 
nuisance,  aren’t  they?” 

“Well,”  he  answered,  “I  used  to  think  so, 
but  I  believe  I  have  learned  how  to  use  them.” 

I  replied  that  I  could  believe  that  all  things 
work  together  for  good  if  he  could  find  any 
blessings  connected  with  the  Erie  tunnels! 

“I  have,”  he  answered.  “I  have  been  com¬ 
muting  to  New  York  city  for  fourteen  years. 
I  have  come  in  from  the  north  on  the  New 
York  Central.  I  have  come  in  from  Long 
Island  for  several  years.  I  have  been  coming 
in  from  New  Jersey.  No  matter  what  way  you 
come  you  always  strike  a  tunnel  just  at  the 
end  of  the  trip.  In  two  minutes  you  will  be 


166 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


dumped  out  into  the  crowded  streets.  The 
city  and  the  day  are  in  front  of  you.  But  for 
the  moment  you  are  alone  in  the  dark.  I 
found  that  the  best  time  to  pray  I  ever  dis¬ 
covered.  I  think  I  can  do  real  business  with 
God  in  that  two  minutes.” 

Chester  B.  Firkins  has  caught  in  a  beauti¬ 
ful  poem  the  very  spirit  and  feeling  of  that 
man’s  discovery  of  the  tunnel  as  a  dark  lane 
that  led  to  God : 

“I  who  have  lost  the  s*tars,  the  sod, 

For  chilling  pave  and  cheerless  light, 

Have  made  my  meeting  place  with  God 
A  new  and  nether  night. 

“A  figment  in  the  crowded  dark. 

When  men  sit  muted  by  the  roar, 

I  ride  upon  the  whirring  spark 
Beneath  the  city’s  floor. 

“You  that  ’neath  country  skies  can  pray. 

Scoff  not  at  me,  the  city  clod. 

My  only  respite  of  the  day 
Is  this  wild  ride  with  God.”1 

How  would  you  like  to  read  an  exact  steno¬ 
graphic  report  of  your  prayers  for  the  last 
two  weeks?  Not  what  you  meant  to  say,  or 

1  "On  a  Subway  Express.”  Used  by  permission  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  Company. 


PARLOR  OR  LIVING  ROOM?  167 


ought  to  have  said,  but  what  you  actually  did 
say.  Would  there  not  be  a  good  many  sen¬ 
tences  which  would  end  up  in  a  row  of 
stars,  thus  ******?  indicating  where 
you  went  to  sleep,  or  where  you  began  to 
think  of  the  high  cost  of  butter  and  eggs! 
Thus  what  ought  to  be  the  most  invigorating 
experience  of  life  receives  the  attention  of  only 
the  frayed  ends  of  a  fatigued  mind. 

Real  prayer  is  like  an  hour  of  sunshine.  The 
plant  grows  all  through  the  night  on  the  life 
and  energy  which  have  come  to  it  in  that 
one  glorious  hour.  You  probably  do  not  pass 
through  a  tunnel  every  morning,  but  you  pass 
some  place  from  where  you  can  send  out  your 
heart  on  an  earnest  quest  that  will  not  be 
denied. 

A  number  of  years  ago  Elizabeth  Stuart 
Phelps  wrote  a  widely  read  story  entitled  The 
Gates  Ajar.  She  pictured  what  might  go  on 
within  the  pearly  gates  of  heaven.  Our  gener¬ 
ation  is  not  so  much  interested  in  “the  gates 
ajar”  as  men  and  women  were  in  other  days. 
But  there  is  a  door  ajar  which  is  a  vital  im¬ 
portance  to  every  one.  It  is  not  the  door  into 
a  far-away  land  of  imagination.  It  is  the  open 
door  into  the  living  room  of  Christian  faith. 


168 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


It  is  opened  for  us.  “Remain  in  me,  as  I 
remain  in  you.  Just  as  a  branch  cannot  bear 
fruit  by  itself  without  remaining  on  the  vine, 
neither  can  you  unless  you  remain  in  me.  If 
you  remain  in  me,  and  my  words  remain  in 
you,  then  ask  whatever  you  will  and  you  shall 
have  it.” 

Why  not  live  there? 


XI 


CALVARY  AND  MAIN  STREET 

“The  place  where  J esus  was  crucified  was  nigh 
to  the  city  ” — John  19.  20 

THIS  is  a  simple  statement  of  geographical 
fact  in  the  account  of  the  crucifixion  of 
Jesus  in  the  Gospel  of  John  which  has  a  wide 
spiritual  suggestiveness.  It  is  the  incidental 
reference  to  the  distance  of  Calvary  from  Jeru¬ 
salem:  “The  place  where  Jesus  was  crucified 
was  nigh  to  the  city.” 

In  the  Gospel  record,  of  course,  there  is  no 
double  meaning  to  this  geographical  informa¬ 
tion.  It  is  just  a  plain  statement  of  the  phys¬ 
ical  fact  that  Calvary  was  near  to  Jerusalem. 
Yet  it  is  a  fact  of  spiritual  geography  as  well 
as  of  physical.  For  it  records  the  truth  that 
the  cross  was  near  to  the  city.  It  is  a  luminous 
symbol  of  the  truth  that  the  cross  of  Christ 
is  near  to  the  city  to-day. 

Calvary  was  not  far  from  the  city  on  that 
day  when  Jesus  traveled  the  short  road  be- 

169 


170 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


tween  them  bearing  his  cross.  Calvary  is  not 
far  from  the  city  to-day.  The  sacrifice  of 
Christ  has  a  vital  relationship  to  all  of  the 
eager  life  of  every  Main  Street — its  hopes,  its 
love,  its  joy,  its  toil,  its  burdens,  its  tragedies. 

There  is  one  particular  phase  of  this  truth 
of  limitless  meaning  which,  if  we  take  it  into 
our  heart  and  imagination,  will  bring  us  face 
to  face  with  the  realities  of  our  inner  life. 
That  is  the  truth  of  intensely  practical  signifi¬ 
cance,  that  just  as  Calvary  was  not  far  from 
Jerusalem,  so  the  forces  and  motives  in  the 
crowd  which  hurried  Jesus  on  his  crucifixion 
are  just  the  same  forces  and  motives  which 
find  play  in  our  everyday  life  and  which  push 
through  unguarded  doors  into  our  own  hearts. 

1.  “Let  us  alone/’  With  the  hoarse  cries 
which  rang  out  in  Pilate’s  judgment  hall, 
“Crucify  him!”  was  mingled  the  angry  de¬ 
mand  of  the  Gadarenes,  “Let  us  alone!”  The 
scribes  and  Pharisees  recognized  Jesus  as 
a  disturber.  That  charge  they  made  against 
him  was  profoundly  true.  Their  fixed  and  fin¬ 
ished  system  had  no  place  for  a  disturber. 
The  “sacred  traditions”  of  Judaism  paid  them 
good  dividends.  They  wished  no  rude,  inquir¬ 
ing  mind  to  unsettle  them.  So  the  easiest, 


CALVARY  AND  MAIN  STREET  171 


most  “practical”  thing  to  do  with  this  man 
with  a  new  idea  was  to  crucify  him. 

How  far  is  this  from  the  Main  Street  on 
which  we  live?  It  is  the  same  protective 
instinct  of  intrenched  custom  and  established 
wrong  which  makes  a  perpetual  Calyary. 
Some  one  has  said,  “There  is  no  pain  on  earth 
like  the  pain  of  a  new  idea.”  Against  each 
new  idea  of  Christ,  as  his  spirit  progressively 
seeks  a  new  embodiment  in  human  life  and 
society,  there  is  launched  the  old  Gadarene 
resentment  against  any  break  in  the  old  and 
easy  ruts.  For  Jesus  is  a  disturber.  When 
he  actually  enters  through  the  inner  gates  of 
our  lives  and  of  society,  it  means  inevitably 
what  it  meant  when  he  entered  Jerusalem — a 
tumult.  It  means :  “Here  is  a  break  in  the 
old  order.  You  will  have  to  sit  up  and  think. 
I  am  come  to  set  a  man  at  variance  with  his 
father.  I  am  come  that  ye  may  have  life  and 
have  it  more  abundantly — a  richer  feast  of 
common  blessing  to  which  the  lame,  the  halt, 
the  blind  are  bidden.” 

When  Christ  enters  life  he  calls  for  new 
adjustments.  Many  people  have  no  objection 
to  Christianity  as  a  lullaby.  As  a  soporific 
all  the  high  priests  of  trade  will  approve  of 


172 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


it  in  solemn  platitudes  about  the  necessity  of 
the  church  to  the  nation.  But  when  it  so  far 
forgets  its  place  as  to  become  an  alarm  clock, 
sending  its  shrill,  daybreak  reveille  of  awak¬ 
ening  against  all  sin  and  wrong  and  injustice 
through  all  the  land — away  with  it! 

2.  Indifference.  But  comparatively  few  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  willed  the  cruci¬ 
fixion  of  Jesus.  To  that  tragedy  they  con¬ 
tributed  only  theii*indifference.  But  that  was 
sufficient.  Their  houses  were  not  located  di¬ 
rectly  along  the  Via  Dolorosa  and  they  did 
not  stop  to  find  out  what  the  tumult  was  about. 
It  did  not  touch  them.  Their  indifference 
was  twofold.  It  was  an  indifference  to  truth. 
Here  was  a  man  who  was  trying  to  say  some¬ 
thing.  He  had  a  message.  But  they  did  not 
bother  to  find  out  what  it  was.  They  showed 
also  an  indifference  to  a  person.  Here  was 
a  man  in  trouble,  being  done  to  death.  It  was 
not  worth  asking,  “What  is  his  defense?” 

Both  of  these  deadly  indifferences  move  in 
our  daily  life.  Indifference  to  truth  is  at  home 
in  Main  Street.  Here  is  a  man  who  is  trying 
to  say  something.  Faint  echoes  of  it  come  to 
our  ears.  But  we  detect  a  slight  foreign  accent 
or  at  least  he  does  not  speak  the  stereotypes 


CALVARY  AND  MAIN  STREET  173 


which  are  sacred  in  our  ears.  We  do  not  try 
to  understand.  We  do  not  even  let  him  speak. 
We  send  in  a  call  for  the  police  reserves.  We 
believe  in  free  speech  as  long  as  we  are  doing 
the  speaking,  or  as  long  as  one  of  our  clique, 
our  party,  our  crowd  is  speaking — no  longer. 
We  get  national  hysterics  which  result  in  such 
abominations  as  the  Lusk  laws  in  New  York 
State.  What  we  do  not  understand  or  do  not 
like  we  ticket  with  the  meaningless  epithets 
of  damnation,  “Bolshevist,”  “Socialist,”  “agi¬ 
tator,”  “undesirable  alien,”  “heretic,”  and  pass 
on  without  disturbing  a  single  wrinkle  of  our 
gray  matter. 

There  is  a  tumult  going  on  at  the  corner, 
in  the  industrial  world.  Angry  cries  are  fly¬ 
ing  through  the  air.  The  crowd  is  noisy  and 
blocks  traffic.  But  it  does  not  come  into  our 
dining  room  and  we  are  too  busy  to  And  out 
what  the  matter  really  is.  A  great  strike  such 
as  the  Steel  Strike  of  1919  can  go  on  with  the 
vast  majority  of  the  population  in  its  immedi¬ 
ate  vicinity  not  having  the  least  idea  in  the 
world  what  it  is  all  about.  Reading  the  daily 
papers  they  only  see  through  a  glass  darkly, 
and  any  other  source  of  information  is  taboo 
as  “red”  propaganda. 


174 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Or  it  is  a  tumult  in  the  political  world — 
in  the  town  or  State.  Something  is  being 
“railroaded  through.”  Suspicions  are  cur¬ 
rent.  The  best  things  of  the  common  welfare 
are  at  stake.  But  it  is  a  complex  matter.  It 
is  a  nuisance  to  bother  with.  “We  have  our 
living  to  make.”  So  we  never  find  the  truth 
at  issue.  It  is  a  slight  thing,  apparently — yet 
it  is  not  far  from  that  indifference  which 
allowed  the  tragic  procession  to  go  on  to 
Calvary.  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  says  very  truly, 

If  the  men  who  were  crucifying  Jesus  could  have 
been  suddenly  stopped  at  the  last  moment,  and  could 
have  been  kept  perfectly  still  for  ten  minutes  and  could 
have  thought  about  it,  some  of  them  would  have 
refused  to  go  on  with  the  crucifixion.  If  they  could 
have  been  stopped  for  twenty  minutes,  still  more  of 
them  would  have  refused  to  go  on  with  it.  They  would 
have  stolen  away  and  wondered  about  The  Man  in  their 
hearts.  People  crucified  Christ  because  they  were  in 
a  hurry. 

And  how  easily  the  sin  of  indifference  to  a 
person  doth  beset  us !  Richard  Whiteing  says 
that  the  average  Londoner  in  the  congested 
slums  of  the  city  could  hear  a  cry  of  “murder” 
at  midnight  and  his  only  comment  would  be, 
“What  a  raucous  voice!”  To  pause  before  a 
human  being  with  a  real  effort  to  understand 


CALVARY  AND  MAIN  STREET  175 


him,  to  appreciate  his  situation  and  real 
needs — surely  nothing  is  more  definitely 
Christlike.  But  what  a  force  impels  us  to  go 
along  on  our  elbowing  way  without  stopping 
to  discover  what  is  happening  in  another  per¬ 
son’s  life !  The  person  may  be  in  the  very  in¬ 
timacy  of  our  own  family  and  yet  we  see  him 
very  inaccurately  and  never  bend  down  in 
intelligent  sympathy  to  find  out  what  it  is 
that  he  really  wants,  strives  for,  or  needs.  It 
may  be  the  man  on  our  block  or  on  the  other 
side  of  town.  We  speculate  somewhat  at  times 
on  the  fascinating  theme  of  the  recognition 
of  friends  in  heaven.  But  there  is  a  matter 
vastly  more  important — the  recognition  of 
friends  on  earth .  It  is  vastly  more  important 
to  recognize  in  the  people  who  cross  our  path, 
not  as  part  of  a  crowd  or  labeled  and  pigeon¬ 
holed  “types,”  but  friends  to  whom  we  reach 
out  understanding  sympathy  instead  of  a  ster¬ 
eotyped  indifference. 

It  will  help  us  to  preserve  this  grace  in  our 
lives  to  remember  the  day  when  men’s  indiffer¬ 
ence  to  a  person  allowed  Jesus  to  go  on  to  the 
cross. 

3.  Class  feeling.  Jesus  did  not  “belong.” 
He  was  an  outsider  to  select  circles  in  Jerusa- 


176 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


lem.  Queer  Galilgeans  were  always  getting 
into  trouble  in  the  city,  so  what  was  there  new 
in  this  particular  squabble  involving  “just 
another  of  the  same  class”?  And  so  because 
he  belonged  so  manifestly  to  another  crowd, 
was  so  different  in  connections  and  thought, 
he  aroused  little  interest  and  no  sympathy  in 
official  minds. 

Watch  the  same  blind  force  in  action  before 
our  front  doors.  It  may  be  the  immigrant, 
strange  in  garb,  mentally  and  physically, 
whom  we  unconsciously  ticket  as  belonging  to 
another  class,  and  by  so  much,  not  a  great 
concern  of  ours.  It  is  so  easy  to  join  in  an 
unintelligent  hue  and  cry.  That  word,  which 
is  being  bandied  about  so  endlessly — Ameri¬ 
canism — may  easily  be  made  to  cover  a  mul¬ 
titude  of  sins ;  sins  against  the  American 
tradition  of  liberty  and  toleration ;  sins 
against  the  Christian  tradition  of  sympathetic 
helpfulness. 

Whenever  we  allow  the  feeling,  “He  doesn’t 
belong  to  us,  he’s  another  kind,”  to  take  the 
helm  that  steers  our  actions,  we  give  place  to 
one  of  the  forces  that  hurried  Jesus  along  to 
the  cross. 

The  cross  is  not  far  from  the  city.  Those 


CALVARY  AND  MAIN  STREET  177 


forces  which  were  set  against  Christ  and  his 
kingdom  in  A.  D.  32  still  run  at  large  wherever 
men  live  and  work  together,  though  frequently 
in  new  disguises.  As  we  lay  those  scenes  of 
Jesus’  days  in  Jerusalem  alongside  of  our  life 
to-day,  the  humble  heart-searching  question  of 
the  disciples  is  born  again  within  us,  “Lord, 
is  it  I  r 


XII 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM 

“Then  .  .  .  the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be 

unstopped  ” — Isaiah  35.  5 

THE  Messianic  picture  in  the  thirty-fifth 
chapter  of  Isaiah  is  one  of  the  most  lofty 
and  beautiful  passages  of  poetry  in  human, 
speech.  Its  magnificent  faith,  its  melody  and 
beauty  have  all  through  the  centuries  made 
the  heart  of  man  rejoice  and  break  out  into 
singing.  Its  divine  vision  of  the  Messianic 
kingdom  has  made  the  desert  of  weariness  and 
discouragement  blossom  into  faith. 

But  its  details,  as  well  as  the  grandeur  and 
beauty  of  the  whole,  are  very  arresting.  These 
details  are  in  the  picture,  of  course,  as  typical 
handicaps  that  shackle  and  cripple  life,  which 
shall  be  removed  in  the  Messianic  kingdom. 
But  as  such  they  also  indicate  pathways  by 
which  the  Kingdom  shall  be  reached.  For  we 
do  not  look  for  this  kingdom  to  drop  suddenly 
out  of  the  sky  as  a  ready-made  social  order, 
in  regard  to  which  man’s  only  duty  is  to 

178 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  179 


receive  and  enjoy.  We  look  to  it,  rather,  as 
the  goal  toward  which  the  Spirit  of  Christ  is 
leading  humanity.  It  is  just  as  true  of  the 
spiritual  achievement  of  the  race  as  it  is  in 
the  Pilgrim’s  Progress  of  an  individual  that 

“Heaven  is  not  reached  by  a  singT.  bound, 

But  we  climb  the  ladder  round  by  round.” 

So  these  details  of  that  Day  of  the  Lord — 
the  strengthened  hands,  the  confirmed  knees, 
the  encouraged  heart,  the  opened  eyes,  the 
unstopped  ears,  the  loosened  tongue,  are  marks 
of  a  Christian  order  of  life  for  which  we  look 
and  pray  and  work.  What  we  do  to  bring 
about  any  one  of  them,  to  any  degree,  is  by  so 
much,  a  bringing  in  of  the  Kingdom. 

No  characteristic  of  the  millennium  as  pic¬ 
tured,  by  Isaiah  is  more  striking  and  suggestive 
for  practical  action  than  the  fact  that  when 
it  comes  “the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be  un¬ 
stopped.”  The  inference  is  clear  that  when¬ 
ever  any  ears  are  so  unstopped  that  through 
them  the  mind  and  heart  can  hear  and  inter¬ 
pret  the  voices  of  the  world,  there  we  have  a 
slice  of  the  millennium.  Lend  me  your  ears, 
then,  friends  and  countrymen,  for  I  wish  not 
merelv  to  talk  into  them  but  about  them. 


180 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


To  a  generation  whicli  lives  amid  the  most 
clamorous  orchestra  of  noises  which  ever  bom¬ 
barded  an  eardrum  it  is  natural  rather  to 
take  its  idea  of  the  millennium  from  the  book 
of  Revelation,  especially  from  that  blessed 
verse,  “There  was  silence  in  heaven  for  the 
space  of  half  an  hour.”  Our  eyes  yearn  for 
the  golden  streets,  no  doubt.  But  even  more 
longingly  our  ears  yearn  for  the  silent  half 
hour  when  all  noises  cease  together.  Profes¬ 
sor  E.  J.  Goodspeed  in  a  recent  issue  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  has  made  out  a  strong  case 
for  the  claim  that  civilized  man  has  far  out¬ 
done  the  primeval  savage  in  his  achievements 
in  the  art  of  producing  barbaric  noise.  He 
claims  that  the  ancient  tom-tom,  the  war  cry, 
and  the  clanging  gong  are  a  soothing  lullaby 
compared  to  the  variegated  din  of  a  city’s 
streets,  with  the  roar  of  the  elevated,  the  thun¬ 
derous  crash  of  the  ten-ton  truck,  the  shriek 
of  the  auto  horn,  and  the  cry  of  the  newsboy 
punctuating  it  all  with  a  shrill  treble.  “I 
wish,”  said  a  weary  man  the  other  day,  as  his 
office  resounded  with  the  din  of  putting  up  a 
skyscraper  next  door,  “I  wish  the  Noiseless 
Typewriter  Company  would  put  out  a  riveting 
machine!”  Visitors  to  Chicago  remember  the 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  181 


piercing  note  of  the  traffic  policeman’s  whistle 
with  the  painful  clearness  with  which  a  per¬ 
son  remembers  the  puncturing  of  an  ear  drum. 
It  sounds  like  the  cry  of  a  lost  soul.  Perhaps 
it  is.  At  any  rate,  it  is  one  of  the  things 
about  which  Chicago  can  proudly  boast, 
“Nothing  like  it  anywhere  else!”  We  may  be 
pardoned  for  thinking  of  the  millennium  as  a 
sound-proof  cell.  There  is  still  a  large  field 
of  service  ahead  of  the  Society  for  the  Sup¬ 
pression  of  the  Unnecessary  Noise  for  the  em¬ 
ployment  of  all  the  energies  and  ingenuities  it 
can  muster. 

Nevertheless,  one  of  the  most  pernicious 
diseases  of  our  noisy  civilization  is  that  of 
stopped-up  ears.  It  is  hardness  of  hearing  in 
the  social  and  industrial,  the  international 
and  spiritual  world  which  holds  back  that 
reign  of  understanding  and  sympathy,  that 
good  will  and  brotherhood  which  are  essential 
attributes  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  inner 
ear  of  the  mind  and  heart  which  should  catch 
the  spiritual  voices  of  the  world  becomes 
clogged.  The  messages  from  the  neighbors, 
whether  from  the  other  part  of  town  across 
the  railroad  tracks,  or  across  the  seas,  mes¬ 
sages  which  would  make  for  sympathetic  un- 


182 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


derstanding,  fall  on  deaf  ears.  We  live  in  an 
industrial  and  commercial  boiler  factory  and 
it  is  hard  to  catch  any  less  clamorous  or  more 
distant  noises  than  that  of  the  clanging  trip 
hammers  immediately  in  front  of  us. 

“New  ears  for  old”  is  the  wonderful  gift 
which  the  radio  has  brought  ns  in  the  jDhysical 
world.  The  imagination  has  barely  taken  hold 
of  the  possibilities  there  are  in  this  discovery 
of  new  ears  for  humanity.  London  whispers, 
and  New  York,  San  Francisco,  and  Honolulu 
listen  gravely.  A  ship  in  distress  in  the  mid- 
Pacific  ticks  out  its  cry  to  the  air  and  imme¬ 
diately  the  rudders  on  every  vessel  within  five 
hundred  miles  turn  toward  it  and  the  dials 
of  the  engines  are  set  at  “Full  Speed  Ahead” 
in  a  race  for  redemption.  A  great  crowd  in 
the  plaza  at  Havana  listened  during  the  first 
moments  of  1923  to  the  chimes  of  Trinity 
Church  in  New  York  pealing  out  a  welcome 
to  the  New  Year. 

What  if  we  might  have  a  similar  miracle  in 
the  spiritual  and  social  world,  whereby  human¬ 
ity  might  have  new  ears  for  old;  ears  from 
which  the  plugs  of  selfish  absorption,  class 
and  race  prejudices,  and  national  isolations 
have  been  removed!  Unstopping  the  ears  of 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  183 


the  spiritually  deaf  is  an  indispensable  pre¬ 
lude  to  the  millennium.  To  bring  in  the 
golden  age  of  brotherhood  we  need,  first,  sym¬ 
pathies  so  alive  and  broad  of  range  and  keen 
of  hearing  that  they  can  catch  both  the  whis¬ 
per  of  the  still  sad  music  of  humanity  and  the 
still,  small  voice  of  God. 

We  close  our  inner  ear  so  readily !  Harriet 
Martineau  had  to  supplement  her  impaired 
powers  of  hearing  by  the  use  of  a  large  ear 
trumpet.  She  had  a  very  disconcerting  but 
convenient  way  of  misplacing  it  or  taking  it 
down  from  her  ear  whenever  she  did  not  wish 
to  listen  to  anything.  Such  a  privilege  dis¬ 
closes  many  advantages  attached  to  an  ear 
trumpet.  With  perfectly  good  hearing  an  in¬ 
flexible  standard  of  courtesy  compels  us  to 
stand  at  attention  while  Mr.  Brown  repeats 
for  the  tenth  time  in  our  hearing  his  veteran 
anecdote,  or  Mrs.  Brown  tells  with  gusto  what 
little  Herbert  said  the  first  time  he  went  to 
Sunday  school.  But  if  we  had  just  very  un¬ 
fortunately  misplaced  our  ear  trumpet  when 
these  bon  mots  appeared  imminent,  how^  de¬ 
lightful  it  would  be !  Or  what  a  privilege  to 
let  the  trumpet  slip  into  our  pocket  wThen  the 
Hon.  Daniel  Webster  Jones,  M.  C.,  sets  forth 


184 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


his  views,  seriatim  and  in  extenso  on  the  tariff 
as  a  bulwark  of  national  prosperity! 

But  we  need  not  long  inordinately  for  an 
ear  trumpet.  We  do  the  trick  of  shutting  off 
our  hearing  very  expertly  as  it  is — too  ex¬ 
pertly!  When  voices  reach  us  which  do  not 
harmonize  with  our  preconceived  ideas  or 
settled  ignorances  and  prejudices — snap  goes 
the  switch  which  shuts  off  our  hearing  and 
the  mind  and  sympathies  are  just  as  immune 
from  disturbances  as  though  we  were  stone 
deaf.  Herbert  Spencer  invented  a  sort  of 
stopping  with  which  he  filled  his  ears  when 
he  used  to  shut  himself  away  from  a  company 
and  be  protected  from  any  danger  of  hear¬ 
ing  their  conversation.  Read  his  biography 
and  you  will  see  the  terrible  price  he  paid  for 
his  selfish  isolation  in  the  shrinking  of  his 
sympathies  and  the  pathetic  frigidity  of  his 
human  contacts.  The  unwelcome  truth  which 
disturbs  our  neatly  arranged  world,  the  point 
of  view  which  differs  from  our  own,  the  cry 
for  help  which  comes  in  the  accents  of  a 
strange  foreign  tongue,  and  which  would  put 
us  to  the  inconvenience  of  actually  doing  some¬ 
thing  about  it — all  these  do  not  get  past  the 
outer  barrier  of  our  intentional  deafness.  No 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  185 


wonder  the  millennium  halts  with  so  many 
stopped  up  ears! 

“Then  .  .  .  the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be 

unstopped.”  What  immediate  steps  can  we 
take  to  bring  about  that  much  of  the  millen¬ 
nium,  here  and  now? 


I 

Hearing,  like  charity,  begins  at  home.  The 
frictions,  the  hardness,  the  coldness  that 
shades  oyer  into  cruelty,  all  come  from  mental 
and  spiritual  deafness  to  other  personalities 
about  us.  The  tragedy  of  many  a  home  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  either  one  or  more  members 
of  it  do  not  take  the  trouble  to  listen  patiently 
enough  and  understandingly  enough  to  dis¬ 
cover  what  it  is  that  the  others  really  want, 
what  the  unexpressed  and  repressed  desires  of 
their  hearts  are. 

Many  a  man  will  listen  for  hours  to  the 
noises  of  his  auto  engine,  trying  with  infinite 
patience  to  learn  just  what  it  is  which  hinders 
it  from  running  smoothly,  who  will  never 
think  hard  for  ten  minutes  over  the  problem 
of  what  may  be  his  wife’s  secret  trouble.  The 
reason  frequently  is  that  we  are  talking  so 


186 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


much  ourselves  that  we  do  not  hear  what  the 
other  person  has  to  say.  Edward  Simmons, 
the  painter,  in  his  autobiography,  tells  of  a 
ready  talker  to  whom  a  lady  once  said,  timidly, 
“Pardon  me  for  interrupting  you  but” — 

“Madam,”  he  replied,  “no  one  could  ever 
speak  without  interrupting  me.” 

The  frank  confession  is  too  often  true.  The 
racing  motor  of  our  own  egoism  drowns  all 
other  noises.  Our  ears  hear  nothing  but  the 
din  of  our  own  discordant  solo,  when  they 
ought  to  be  attuned  to  a  chorus  of  blended 
voices. 

To  put  the  soft  pedal  on  the  internal  clamor 
of  selfishness  and  listen  to  the  people  at  home, 
and  in  the  daily  encounters  of  the  market  place 
is  a  first  step  toward  the  millennium.  We 
may  reverently  paraphrase  that  great  exhorta¬ 
tion  of  Paul’s,  “Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which 
was  also  in  Christ  Jesus”  and  say,  “Let  those 
ears  be  in  us  which  were  also  in  Christ  Jesus.” 
What  sensitive  hearing  he  had!  The  call  of 
the  blind  beggar  by  the  roadside,  the  whispered 
conversations  of  his  disciples,  the  quiet  move¬ 
ment  of  a  woman  in  need — none  of  these  sounds 
escaped  him.  Whenever  he  confronted  a  hu¬ 
man  personality  he  stood  at  attention.  All 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  187 


of  his  marvelous  sympathy  was  instantly  on 
the  alert.  With  ears  ever  open  to  every  voice 
of  human  need  and  aspiration,  he  created  a 
new  world  of  good  will  wdierever  he  went. 
That  creative  power  of  understanding  and 
sympathy  is  just  what  the  world  about  us 
needs. 

Ill 

Are  your  ears  open  to  the  still sad  music  of 
humanity  f  They  must  be  if  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  ever  to  come.  Can  you  hear  the  voices 
from  other  groups  and  classes,  and  other 
lands?  Is  the  receiving  apparatus  in  your 
mind  and  heart  able  to  catch  the  voice  of  Asia 
and  Euroj)e  and  make  anything  out  of  it  with 
a  vital  meaning  to  yourself?  Or  is  its  range 
limited,  like  a  cheap  crystal  radio  set,  to  the 
distance  between  your  house  and  your  office? 
There  is  a  marvelous  parade  passing  daily  up 
and  down  your  very  streets.  Does  it  mean 
anything  to  you? 

“There’s  Asia  on  the  Avenue 
And  Europe  on  the  street 
And  Africa  goes  plodding  by 
Beneath  my  window  seat.” 

Does  your  heart  hear  anything  but  irritating 


188 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


noises  which  you  cannot  translate?  Can  you 
hear  a  heart  beat  in  a  great  crowd,  the  voice 
of  baffled  aspiration,  the  sigh  of  weariness  and 
despair?  Or  are  you  like  the  New  Yorker  who 
mingled  with  a  crowd  of  Jewish  garment  work¬ 
ers  blocking  the  sidewalk  of  Fifth  Avenue, 
Manhattan,  at  noon  and  who  cynically  said, 
“I  can  see  why  they  have  pogroms  in  Russia”? 

In  the  Sutta  Nipata }  one  of  the  sacred  books 
of  the  Buddhists,  this  advice  is  given :  “Make 
yourself  an  island.”  But  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment,  the  sacred  book  of  the  Christians,  the 
very  opposite  advice  is  given :  “Join  yourself 
to  the  mainland  of  humanity.”  In  these  after- 
the-war  days  in  the  United  States  there  have 
been  a  good  many  “Buddhists”  who  endeav¬ 
ored  to  make  of  themselves  and  their  country 
an  island  separated  from  the  great  continents 
of  human  need. 

Sometimes  even  in  the  church  we  are  hard 
of  hearing.  Frequently  “where  sound  the 
cries  of  race  and  clan”  the  pij)e  organ  is  peal¬ 
ing  out  so  loudly  the  strains  of  “Peace,  Per¬ 
fect  Peace,”  that  we  do  not  hear  the  strife  out¬ 
side  of  the  building.  Our  stopped-up  ears 
make  us  poor  servants  of  the  great  Master  of 
the  art  of  listening. 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  189 


Christ  seeks  to  lead  us  into  a  sympathetic 
fellowship  with  all  mankind,  so  close  that  we 
hear  and  understand  the  voice  of  need  in  all 
dialects. 

Come — let  us  get  our  gospel  now  by  heart — 

“ One  man  in  grief  sets  a  whole  world  in  tears ; 

No  man  is  free,  while  one  for  freedom  fears” 

The  fundamental  defect  is  that  we  do  not 
hear  the  still }  small  voice  of  God.  The  clamors 
of  the  earth  assault  the  ear  and  confuse  the 
mind;  the  voice  from  the  sky  is  drowned  out 
in  the  din.  A  resident  of  New  York  recently 
said  that  he  had  heard  in  the  city  every  kind 
of  noise  except  one — thunder.  Artificial  thun¬ 
der  is  common  enough  in  the  city.  Blasting 
in  excavating,  automobiles,  the  unceasing 
traffic  over  cobblestones,  all  supply  it  in  excess. 
But  real  thunder,  sky  thunder,  rarely  makes 
itself  heard.  “Which  things  are  a  parable.” 
Our  ears  are  stopped  to  the  voices  of  the  sky, 
the  great  words  of  eternal  life.  And  because 
those  great  words  of  God  do  not  enter  our 
ears  and  fill  our  minds  with  awe,  so  much  of 
our  chatter  is  futile,  as  superficial  and  mechan¬ 
ical  as  the  jingle  of  a  cash  register.  The  ar¬ 
resting  cry  of  the  old  prophet  should  echo 


190 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


throughout  the  streets,  “O  Earth,  earth,  earth, 
hear  the  word  of  the  Lord.” 

Without  that  penetration  of  the  divine  will 
and  purpose  of  life  into  our  inmost  mind,  we 
have  very  little  to  say.  The  Gospels  record 
a  very  suggestive  miracle  performed  by  Jesus 
where  a  dumb  man  was  cured  by  having  his 
hearing  restored.  Hearing  and  speech  are 
very  intimately  related.  The  great  reason  that 
our  civilization  has  so  little  to  say  of  profound 
significance  is  that  it  hears  so  little  of  the  voice 
of  God.  The  invention  of  the  radio  has  shown 
the  tragic  disproportion  between  the  wonder 
of  the  means  of  communication  and  the  piti¬ 
able  mediocrity  of  the  message  being  com¬ 
municated.  Inventions  that  approach  the  sub¬ 
lime  are  used  to  project  the  ridiculous.  With 
keen,  satiric  touch  a  writer,  Charles  Merz,  has 
imagined  the  future  of  the  radio  in  China. 
He  says:  “Whoever  has  spent  a  radio  even¬ 
ing  in  America — ear-phones  clamped  upon  his 
head,  can  conceive  its  counterpart  in  China 
.  .  .  Station  WLB,  at  Tientsin,  broad¬ 
casting  .  .  .  Miss  Mon  Ling  Wang  will 

now  sing  ‘Silver  Threads  Among  the  Gold* 
.  .  .  Stand  by  for  two  minutes,  please.  .  .  . 
Our  next  number,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  will 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  191 


be  a  monologue  by  Mr.  Harry  Wu  Soo  Koo: 
‘How  I  Killed  My  Mother-in-Law.’  ” 

If  our  age  is  to  have  any  great  expressions 
of  life,  it  must  hear  the  great  words  of  life. 
If  our  personal  lives  are  to  have  significance, 
our  ears  must  be  open  to  the  voice  of  God. 
The  great  words  of  Jesus — the  Father  God, 
the  primacy  of  the  inner  spiritual  quality  of 
life,  the  family  relationship  of  all  men,  must  be 
the  core  of  all  our  thinking. 


IV 

Can  you  hear  the  voice  of  the  future?  To 
many  people  the  very  question  is  ridiculous. 
What  do  they  care  for  the  future?  They  are 
living  now.  Their  attitude  to  posterity  is  ex¬ 
actly  that  of  Sir  Boyle  Roche,  who  asked  in 
the  House  of  Commons  the  classic  question: 
“Why  should  we  care  for  posterity?  What 
has  posterity  done  for  us?” 

Yet  what  hope  is  there  for  the  world  unless 
we  can  actually  hear  the  need  of  to-morrow’s 
children?  Henry  Clay  once,  in  a  grandilo¬ 
quent  gesture,  when  crossing  the  Appalachian 
Mountains,  put  his  ear  down  to  the  ground 
and  said :  “I  can  hear  the  tramp  of  the  com- 


192 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


ing  millions.”  It  is  too  bad  that  the  spirit  of 
Henry  Clay  did  not  possess  the  destroyers  who 
have  wasted  the  heritage  of  those  coming  mil¬ 
lions  in  carelessly  slaughtered  forests,  squan¬ 
dered  water  power  and  mineral  resources,  all 
for  the  sake  of  immediate  loot.  The  ears  of 
the  whole  inglorious  gang  of  bandits  who  have 
robbed  the  future  generations  of  the  natural 
resources  of  the  country,  and  the  somnolent 
public  which  has  allowed  it  to  be  done,  are 
completely  deaf  to  the  needs  and  rights  of 
the  future. 

Yet  there  are  those  who  can  hear  the  voice 
of  the  future.  Scientists  hear  it  keenly.  At 
the  meeting  of  the  American  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science  in  Boston  in  De¬ 
cember,  1922,  there  was  told  a  perfectly  amaz¬ 
ing  story  of  the  unceasing  effort  made  by  a 
group  of  scientists  to  discover  an  adequate 
fuel  for  the  future  when  the  world’s  limited 
supply  of  coal  and  oil  and  wood  gives  out,  as 
it  will  some  day  give  out.  Twelve  years  of 
continuous  study  have  been  made  in  one  labor¬ 
atory,  observing  the  chemical  changes  in  the 
growing  leaf,  in  the  hope  of  surprising  nature 
in  her  secret  of  making  carbon  directly  from 
the  air.  The  only  way  that  can  be  seen  for 


A  SLICE  OF  THE  MILLENNIUM  193 


keeping  civilization  alive  after  the  coal  and 
oil  are  gone  is  through  some  mastery  of  the 
source  of  energy  in  the  carbon  of  the  air.  Sci¬ 
entists  in  many  fields  are  cooperating  in  an 
intense  and  unremitting  study  of  the  problem 
of  getting  fuel  from  sunlight. 

Think  of  it — men  so  deeply  concerned  over 
what  will  happen  five  hundred  or  a  thousand 
years  from  now  that  they  give  the  energies  of 
their  lives  to  the  problem !  What  an  ideal  they 
hold  up!  What  a  rebuke  to  selfish  lives  en¬ 
tangled  entirely  in  the  moment. 

A  sense  of  the  future,  just  as  keen  and 
even  deeper  in  its  devotion,  marks  the  lives  of 
those  who  have  gone  into  the  great  adventure 
of  giving  the  future  the  ideas  and  ideals  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  its  guiding  force. 

The  foreign  missionaries  have  heard  the  call 
of  the  future  as  ambassadors  of  the  Master 
Builder.  They  have  gone  down  where  the 
deep  foundations  for  the  civilization  of  to¬ 
morrow  are  being  laid,  content  that  their  lives 
shall  be  buried  in  obscurity  if  they  can  help 
to  raise  the  structure  of  a  noble  home  for  the 
children  of  to-morrow.  These  builders  are 
just  like  the  workmen  who  risk  their  lives  and 
health  in  going  down  into  the  caissons  to  pre- 


194 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


pare  the  foundations  for  the  skyscrapers  of 
the  future. 

Can  we  hear  the  voice  of  to-morrow?  We 
can  if  we  have  the  ears  of  Christ.  To  prepare 
the  next  generation,  to  equip  it  with  the  ideals 
which  will  achieve  peace  and  brotherhood  is 
a  major  task  which  can  be  shunned  by  Chris¬ 
tian  men  or  women  only  at  the  cost  of  denying 
their  Lord. 

As  we  thread  our  lives  with  the  great  pur¬ 
pose  of  building  for  a  better  future,  they  are 
lifted  out  of  the  pettiness  of  selfish  absorption 
into  dignity  and  responsibility. 

Jesus  restored  hearing  to  the  deaf.  “Lend 
him  your  ears.” 


XIII 


TRANSLATING  THE  CROSS 

“And  it  was  written  in  Hebrew }  and  Greek , 
and  Latin.” — John  19.  20 

OVER  the  cross  of  Jesus  on  Calvary  there 
was  written  an  inscription  in  three  lan¬ 
guages,  Hebrew,  Latin,  and  Greek.  For  mul¬ 
titudes  of  people  that  inscription  has  never 
been  translated  into  English.  It  is  still  Greek 
to  them.  The  real  meaning  of  the  cross  is  still 
locked  up  in  a  dead  language. 

There  is  a  real  shock  when  we  discover  how 
acceptably  we  may  go  through  the  motions  of 
an  upright,  honorable,  and  even  a  religious 
life,  and  yet  never  bear  any  real  part  in  the 
sufferings  of  Christ.  When  we  speak  of  the 
cross  of  Christ  and  its  meaning  in  his  life  and 
in  ours,  we  need  to  get  a  very  clear  focus  on 
the  meaning  of  the  word.  It  is  common  to 
refer  to  almost  any  sorrow  or  burden  of 
trouble  as  a  “cross.”  Such  usage  raises  a  fog 
which  obscures  the  real  meaning  of  the  word. 

195 


196 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Jesus  knew  sorrow  from  the  beginning  of  his 
life  to  the  end.  He  carried  burdens  and  daily 
endured  privations.  He  had  not  where  to  lay 
his  head.  But  neither  the  sorrow  nor  the 
trouble  was  his  cross.  The  cross  was  not  the 
mere  endurance,  no  matter  how  patient  or 
heroic,  of  anything  that  happened  to  him.  It 
was  his  deliberate  choice.  It  was  the  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  sin  and  need  of  men  as  his  own 
^  deepest  concern. 

How  easy  it  is  to  avoid  that  sacrificial  atti¬ 
tude  to  life  which  constitutes  the  cross !  Take 
an  extreme  example — the  life  of  a  minister  of 
the  gospel.  It  might  be  thought  that  his  very 
profession  would  commit  him  to  the  law  of 
the  cross.  But  that  law  is  perilously  easy  to 
avoid.  He  may  be  an  eloquent  preacher,  an 
inspiring  friend,  an  eminently  useful  man,  and 
yet  never  deliberately  bind  a  cross  of  costly 
service  upon  his  shoulders.  He  may  uncon¬ 
sciously  be  more  intent  on  building  his  own 
reputation  than  on  building  new  foundations 
for  other  people’s  lives.  It  is  written  of  Jesus 
that  “he  made  himself  of  no  reputation.” 
What  a  subtle  test  for  any  minister  lies  right 
there!  To  endure  hardship?  Yes!  To  toil 
terribly?  Yes!  But  to  make  oneself  “of  no 


TRANSLATING  THE  CROSS  197 


reputation” — that  for  many  a  minister  is  the 
last  full  measure  of  devotion!  So  any  of  us 
may  have  an  honored  place  and  do  a  great 
deal  of  good  and  the  meaning  of  the  cross  still 
be  written  for  us  in  a  dead  language.  Each 
one  of  us  must  translate  it  for  himself  into  the 
living  speech  of  experience. 

There  are  two  crosses,  widely  different  in 
character,  which  have  caught  the  imagination 
of  the  world.  One  is  the  Southern  Cross  which 
hangs  in  the  tropical  skies,  a  wonderful  con¬ 
stellation  of  stars  in  the  form  of  a  cross.  It 
is  beautiful  but  remote.  It  belongs  to  heaven 
only,  not  to  earth,  a  thing  to  be  gazed  on.  The 
other  is  the  Fiery  Cross  of  the  Scotch  High¬ 
lands,  a  flaming  beacon  set  upon  a  hill,  which 
called  the  clans  to  battle.  It  blazed  forth  on 
earth,  vitally  and  intimately  related  to  the  life 
of  every  one  who  saw  it.  It  was  a  demand  for 
immediate  action. 

To  many  the  cross  of  Christ  is  like  the  cross 
of  stars  in  the  southern  skies.  It  is  a  beautiful 
doctrine  set  in  the  heavens,  remote  from  life, 
regarded  with  awe,  but  with  no  immediate 
relation  to  their  own  life.  The  cross  of  Jesus 
more  truly  resembles  that  Fiery  Cross  of  Scot¬ 
land.  It  is  a  personal  call  for  sacrificial  ac- 


198 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


tion.  Jesus  planted  on  Calvary  a  standard 
that  sends  out  its  mighty  appeal  down  across 
the  valley  of  the  years,  and  calls  us  to  self- 
effacing  love  and  service  in  his  name  and 
spirit. 

The  cross  interprets  God.  It  saves  us  from 
the  conception  of  a  more  or  less  satisfied  God. 
That  is  a  conception  which  we  very  easily  run 
into  and  which  has  a  benumbing  effect  on 
life.  Men  easily  drift  into  an  idea  of  a  God 
who  is  holy,  awe-inspiring,  but  very  far  away, 
and,  to  put  it  baldly,  somewhat  leisurely  com¬ 
placent.  We  often  hear  the  remark  quoted, 
as  a  counsel  to  patience,  “The  trouble  with  us 
is  that  God  is  not  in  a  hurry  and  we  are.” 
Now,  of  course,  in  that  statement  there  is  pro¬ 
found  truth.  A  day  with  the  Lord  is  as  a 
thousand  years.  But  often  the  remark,  as 
quoted,  represents  an  idea  of  a  God  who  is 
not  tremendously  concerned  over  to-day’s  im¬ 
mediate  tragedies  and  woe.  Such  an  idea  is 
shattered  at  Calvary.  As  we  open  our  heart 
to  the  meaning  of  the  offering  of  Jesus  for  the 
world’s  sin,  we  realize  that  God  is  in  a  truly 
terrible  hurry.  He  is  in  a  divine,  heart-broken 
hurry  over  sin  and  the  wreck  which  it  brings, 
an  urgency  so  measureless  that  he  spared 


TRANSLATING  THE  CROSS  199 


not  his  own  Son.  In  the  Passion  of  Christ 
we  catch  a  vision  of  God  infinitely  in  earnest, 
and  if  we  live  with  onr  eyes  open  to  that  vision, 
it  transforms  all  our  thought  of  him  and  all 
our  prayers. 

When  we  translate  the  cross  out  of  the  dead 
language  of  theory  it  creates  in  us  a  new  atti¬ 
tude  of  life.  Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  has  expressed 
this  change  memorably:  “When  I  visit  Cal¬ 
vary  life  is  transformed  from  a  picnic  into  a 
crusade.”  The  difference  between  a  picnic 
and  a  crusade  was  brought  home  vividly  to 
many  Americans  by  the  war.  One  army  officer 
as  he  embarked  on  the  Leviathan  with  his  regi¬ 
ment  for  France,  said,  with  a  smile:  “The 
last  time  I  sailed  to  Europe  on  this  ship  I 
put  in  the  whole  trip  complaining  about  my 
stateroom.  I  never  thought  I’d  be  glad  of  a 
trip  in  the  steerage.” 

Unless  we  share  the  Passion  of  Christ  it  is 
hard  to  keep  life  from  being  some  kind  of  a 
picnic.  A.  great  many  people  spend  their 
whole  trip  through  life  complaining,  more  or 
less  gently,  about  their  stateroom  and  trying 
to  have  it  changed.  Their  world  revolves 
about  themselves.  They  are  pleasant  with 
their  fellow  passengers,  upright  and  kind,  and 


200 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


yet,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  life  is  essen¬ 
tially  a  pleasure  trip. 

A  steamship  company  has  recently  put  out 
a  very  alluring  advertisement  assuring  us  that 
we  can  have  “sixteenth-century  adventure  in 
twentieth-century  comfort.”  To  prove  the 
case  the  advertisement  goes  on  eloquently : 

When  Drake  sailed  Round-the-World  toward  the  close 
of  the  16th  Century  he  had  to  rely  on  sails  and  favorable 
winds  and  his  compasses  were  doubtful.  With  scanty 
provisions  and  inadequate  maps  his  anxieties  and  pri¬ 
vations  were  indescribable,  but  his  reward  was  adven¬ 
ture,  romance,  and  an  experience  to  be  looked  back 
upon  with  pride.  That  was  a  sixteenth-century  cruise. 

To-day,  over  three  centuries  later,  comes  Your  World 
voyage,  full  of  the  old-time  adventure  and  romance. 

That  sounds  fascinating,  but  I  wonder  what 
Francis  Drake  and  the  other  sea  dogs  of  the 
spacious  days  of  the  great  Elizabeth  would 
think  of  that  proposition.  There  would  be  no 
question  about  the  steam-heated  comfort.  But 
what  of  the  adventure  and  romance?  Can 
you  compare  for  a  moment  the  placid  life  in 
a  deck  chair  where  the  most  thrilling  event  of 
the  day  is  the  dinner  gong,  with  adventure  of 
rounding  the  Horn  in  the  teeth  of  a  gale?  Or 
the  romance  of  the  life  and  death  struggle 


TRANSLATING  THE  CROSS  201 


with  Spain  on  the  high  seas,  with  the  great 
issue  at  stake  of  planting  a  Protestant  and 
English  civilization  in  North  America? 

“We  break  the  new  seas  to-day, — 

Our  eager  keels  quest  unaccustomed  waters, 
And,  from  the  vast  uncharted  waste  in  front. 

The  mystic  circles  leap 

To  greet  our  prows  with  mightiest  possibilities; 

*  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  « 

And,  maybe,  Golden  Days, 

Full  freighted  with  delight! 

— And  wide  free  seas  of  unimagined  bliss, 

— And  Treasure  Isles,  and  Kingdoms  to  be  won, 

And  Undiscovered  Countries  and  New  Kin.”1 

No,  twentieth-century  comfort  and  sixteenth 
century  adventure  are  mutually  exclusive. 

Yet  that  is  the  combination  in  religion 
which  many  of  us  are  seeking  or  even  imagine 
we  have  made — twentieth-century  comfort  in 
an  upholstered  pew  and  first-century  Christian 
adventure.  Adventure  must  be  made  of  sterner 
stuff.  Go  back  to  the  book  of  Acts.  Ask 
Stephen.  ^_sk  Peter.  Ask  Paul. 

When  we  embark  on  life  with  Christ  we  join 
an  Expeditionary  Force.  The  one  thing  that 

1  “New  Year’s  Day  and  Every  Day,”  John  Oxenham,  in  volume  entitled 
Bees  in  Amber ,  American  Tract  Society,  publishers.  Reprinted  by  permis¬ 
sion. 


202 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


matters  is  the  goal  to  which  the  Captain  of  our 
salvation  has  gone  on  before,  the  war  of  liber¬ 
ation,  striking  fetters  from  those  whom  sin 
and  oppression  have  bound  and  making  life 
larger  and  richer. 

This  new  attitude  puts  a  new  frontage  to 
all  our  relations  with  people.  The  line  of  least 
resistance  for  all  of  us  is  to  reserve  ourselves 
for  the  congenial  group  which  we  make  as 
naturally  and  as  inevitably  as  a  stone  dropped 
in  a  pool  forms  a  circle.  Life  has  few  blessings 
so  rich.  The  danger  of  the  circle  is  that  its 
satisfactions  may  rob  us  of  the  only  truly 
Christian  attitude  to  people :  “Ourselves  your 
servant,  for  Jesus’  sake.”  We  become  critical. 
Stupid  people  bore  us.  Shallow  people  disgust 
us.  Wicked  people  repel  us.  Unless  we  have 
a  strong  corrective,  such  as  only  the  love  of 
Christ  can  supply,  we  soon  require  that  before 
people  can  cross  the  barbed- wire  entangle¬ 
ments  at  the  door  into  our  sympathies  and 
friendship,  they  must  pass  an  intelligence  test, 
or  a  social  test. 

The  law  of  the  cross  as  it  ruled  Jesus’  whole 
life  made  the  most  “interesting”  persons  to 
him,  not  the  circle  of  congenial  friends,  though 
he  loved  them  dearly,  but  the  people  who 


TRANSLATING  THE  CROSS  203 


needed  him  most.  That  is  the  law  which  must 
reign  in  us. 

Once  after  hearing  in  Glasgow  a  famous 
political  leader,  a  man  wrote  of  him  that  “he 
spoke  like  a  man  who  was  happy  in  having  an 
excellent  case,  not  like  a  man  with  a  cause.” 
Our  fatal  defect  is  that  so  often  we  have  in  our 
faith  merely  an  excellent  case ;  so  rarely  an 
all-consuming  cause . 

That  difference  was  beautifully  illustrated 
a  short  time  ago  in  the  quiet  act  of  a  physi¬ 
cian  in  the  Broad  Street  Hospital,  New  York 
city.  Dr.  Felix  Scardapane,  twenty-five  years 
of  age,  who  came  to  this  country  as  a  boy  of 
ten,  finding  that  a  patient  needed  a  quart  of 
blood  in  order  to  save  her  life,  and  there  being- 
no  one  at  hand  to  give  it,  calmly  and  quietly 
called  in  other  doctors  to  perform  the  trans¬ 
fusion  operation  and  gave  the  blood  himself. 
The  young  physician  had  a  case.  But  more 
than  that,  he  had  a  cause  that  lifted  him  clear 
above  self-regarding  prudence  into  the  realm 
of  sacrifice. 

It  is  when  lifted  up  to  that  realm  of  sacrifice 
that  the  lighted  glory  of  life  comes.  He  who 
has  experienced  it  can  say  with  Edna  Saint 
Vincent  Millay : 


204 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


“My  candle  burns  at  both  ends 
It  will  not  last  the  night! 

But  ah!  my  foes  and  oh!  my  friends. 

It  gives  a  lovely  light!"1 2 3 * 

We  never  overtake  the  highest  use,  or,  for 
that  matter,  the  highest  joy  of  life,  until  we 
carry  out  into  the  most  ordinary  relations  of 
life  with  all  sorts  of  people,  something  akin 
to  the  Christ  spirit  in  Paul,  as  expressed  by 
Myers. 

“Only  like  souls  I  see  the  folk  thereunder, 

Bound  who  should  conquer,  slaves  who  should  be  kings. 
•  ••••••• 

Then  with  a  rush  the  intolerable  craving 
Shivers  throughout  me  like  a  trumpet  call; 

Oh,  to  save  these,  to  perish  for  their  saving, 

Die  for  their  life,  be  offered  for  them  all!"8 


1  From  Poems ,  by  Edna  Saint  Vincent  Millay.  Reprinted  by  permission 

of  The  Macmillan  Company. 

3  From  “St.  Paul,”  by  F.  W.  H.  Myera.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The 

Macmillan  Company. 


WORDS  FREQUENTLY 
MISPRONOUNCED 

“Let  the  words  of  my  mouth  ...  he 
acceptable  in  thy  sight,  0  Jehovah ,  my 
rock,  and  my  redeemer — Psalm  19.  14 

I  HAVE  on  my  desk  a  book  with  a  terrible 
title.  It  is  “Seven  Thousand  Words  Fre¬ 
quently  Mispronounced  ”  It  is  rather  discon¬ 
certing  to  know  that  every  time  you  open  your 
mouth  there  are  seven  thousand  distinct  and 
separate  chances  of  making  yourself  ridicu¬ 
lous.  It  is  almost  enough  to  make  one  take  a 
vow  of  perpetual  silence.  Of  course  looking 
through  the  book  is  reassuring.  Most  of  the 
words  we  will  never  need  to  pronounce,  nor 
even  learn  the  meaning.  If  we  were  to  pro¬ 
nounce  them  very  often  in  the  course  of  our 
daily  speech,  our  friends  would  seriously  con¬ 
sider  sending  us  to  the  observation  ward  to 
have  our  sanitv  tested. 

e/ 

Nevertheless,  the  title  of  the  book  is  rather 

205 


206 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


upsetting.  Remembering  these  seven  thou¬ 
sand  lurking  pitfalls  makes  us  as  nervous  as 
the  centipede  who  was  able  to  navigate  splen¬ 
didly  until  some  one  asked  him  which  foot 
went  before  which.  Then  he  could  do  nothing 
but  helplessly  lie  on  his  back  trying  to  decide. 

The  words  that  really  bother  us,  however, 
are  not  the  long,  unusual  words.  The  most 
troublesome  words  are  the  short  ones.  Nearly 
all  the  big  things  of  life  are  expressed  in  words 
of  one  syllable,  in  words  of  three  or  four 
letters  even.  The  right  use  of  small  words  is 
the  greatest  of  life’s  lessons,  as  it  is  the  long¬ 
est  and  hardest.  The  use  of  long  words  is  a 
pose  of  an  immature  mind.  Most  of  us  pass 
through  a  stage  of  growth  in  which  the  use  of 
long  words  is  mistaken  for  a  mark  of  educa¬ 
tion  and  culture.  It  is  a  normal  step  in  de¬ 
velopment,  and  most  people  pass  through  it 
successfully,  as  they  pass  through  the  measles. 
But  some  people  stick  there  all  their  lives  like 
a  college  student  who  never  gets  out  of  the 
sophomore  class. 

The  words  for  really  big  things  are  all  short. 
Such  words  as  God,  man,  child,  wife,  love,  life, 
sky,  home,  light,  pain,  death.  Jesus  spoke 
mostly  in  monosyllables.  That  was  doubtless 


WOEDS  MISPRONOUNCED  207 


one  reason  why  the  common  people  heard  him 
gladly.  He  dealt  with  the  simple,  universal 
things  of  life.  The  Beatitudes,  in  the  King 
James  version  of  Matthew,  contain  one  hun¬ 
dred  and  nineteen  words.  Of  these  ninety  are 
words  of  one  syllable. 

In  our  use  of  words  it  is  the  right  pronun¬ 
ciation  of  these  tremendously  big  little  words 
which  must  be  mastered.  To  slur  them  over 
when  they  ought  to  be  emphasized,  or  to  pro¬ 
nounce  them  flippantly  when  they  should  have 
an  accent  of  reverence,  is  a  serious  matter. 

Think  for  a  few  moments  of  three  short 
words  which  are  frequently  mispronounced 
and  tragically  stumbled  over.  To  trip  on  them, 
to  use  them  wrongly,  is  to  spoil  and  blight 
one’s  life. 


I 

The  first  of  these  words  is  God .  A  word  of 
just  three  letters;  a  measureless  infinity  in  one 
little  syllable.  It  is  the  most  important  word 
in  the  language,  the  highest  reach  of  human 
thought.  Do  you  use  it  as  it  should  be  used? 
How  terribly  mispronounced  the  word  is  when 
not  used  with  its  right  significance  or  in  the 
right  frame  of  mind! 


208 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


A  common  mistake  is  not  to  pronounce  it  at 
all.  That  is  what  many  people  do.  God  never 
comes  into  their  thought.  They  are  not  im¬ 
moral.  They  are  not  irreligious.  They  are 
simply  non-religious.  They  have  bowed  God 
out  of  their  universe,  sometimes  politely,  some¬ 
times  rudely.  Without  God  in  one’s  daily 
vocabulary  and  daily  speech  the  purpose  of 
life  is  meaningless.  It  is  a  story  without  a 
plot.  It  is  what  Macbeth  said  it  was : 

“.  .  .  a  tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury. 
Signifying  nothing.” 

Without  that  word  human  speech  becomes 
mere  chatter.  For  it  is  the  idea  of  God  which 
floods  all  other  words  with  meaning,  just  as 
the  glitter  in  every  star  comes  from  the  sun. 

The  word  “God”  is  mispronounced  when  it 
is  used  as  a  profane  oath.  It  is  unspeakably 
sad  that  the  word  “God”  is  rarely  or  never 
pronounced  by  thousands  of  people  except  in 
profanity.  Profanity  is  frequently  an  indica¬ 
tion  of  an  irreverence  which  runs  all  through 
the  mind  and  heart.  But  it  is  not  always  so. 
Sometimes  it  is  an  index  only  of  an  utter  men¬ 
tal  vacancy,  when  men  have  no  command  of 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  209 


speech  to  express  their  meaning  and  so  drop 
into  the  stereotyped  expressions  of  profanity 
which  are  always  a  refuge  for  lazy  and  feeble 
minds. 

Byron  has  accurately  explained  the  reason 
for  a  great  deal  of  profanity  in  his  line,  “He 
knew  not  what  to  say  and  so  he  swore.”  For 
that  reason  profanity  is  not  always  to  be  taken 
at  its  value  to  the  ear.  Many  a  man  has  unfor¬ 
tunately  fallen  into  the  habit  of  profanity  who 
is  not  at  heart  blasphemous  or  irreverent. 
Nevertheless,  his  words  are  a  continual  libel 
on  himself  and  a  social  pestilence.  A  stream 
of  profanity  running  through  a  home  or  an 
office  or  a  shop  is  like  an  open  sewer;  it  con¬ 
taminates  and  injures  everything  it  touches. 

Many  mistakenly  pronounce  the  word  God 
as  though  he  were  a  million  miles  away.  Their 
practical  attitude  toward  him  is  the  same  as 
their  attitude  to  the  planet  Uranus.  It  has  no 
connection  with  their  daily  life.  The  word 
“God”  does  not  indicate  to  them  any  warm, 
intimate  idea  of  personal  relation. 

Many  years  ago  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  described 
the  attitude  of  the  Japanese  toward  the  super¬ 
natural  as  one  of  “politeness  toward  possibili¬ 
ties.”  That  attitude  cannot  be  classed  as  the 


210 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


exclusive  property  of  Japan.  It  has  been  dis¬ 
covered  in  America  also.  Voltaire  expressed 
the  same  common  attitude  when  one  day  in 
Paris  he  lifted  his  hat  as  he  passed  a  crucifix. 
A  friend  exclaimed  in  surprise:  “I  thought 
you  were  an  infidel!  Are  you  reconciled  to 
God?”  Voltaire  answered,  “We  salute,  but 
we  do  not  speak.”  A  great  many  people  have 
just  about  as  active  and  vital  a  faith.  They 
are  mutes  who  occasionally  make  a  vague  and 
general  gesture  of  respect  to  God.  But  that  is 
the  extent  of  diplomatic  relations. 

Jesus  taught  men  how  to  pronounce  the 
word  “God.”  He  pronounced  it  not  in  craven 
fear  but  always  with  reverence,  with  warmth, 
with  eagerness,  with  love,  because  he  was 
speaking  of  and  to  his  father. 

Do  your  lips  frame  the  word  rightly?  That 
word  is  the  magic  “Open  sesame”  which  un¬ 
locks  the  doors  to  the  treasure  house  of  life. 

II 

Another  word  frequently  mispronounced  is 
even  shorter — the  word  “ I  ”  That  is  a  hard 
word  to  use  rightly.  It  is  the  smallest  word  in 
the  language,  and  also  the  most  troublesome. 
To  many  people  it  is  the  only  word.  A  great 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  211 


problem  in  every  life  is  to  master  the  use  of 
the  word  “I,”  to  give  it  its  proper  place  in 
relation  to  other  people  and  other  things. 

Professor  James  H.  Robinson  says,  “The 
little  word  ‘my’  is  the  most  important  one  in 
all  human  affairs  and  to  reckon  with  it  prop¬ 
erly  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  It  has  the 
same  force  whether  it  is  ‘my’  dinner,  ‘my’  dog, 
‘my’  house,  or  ‘my’  faith,  ‘my’  country,  ‘my’ 
God.” 

The  mastery  of  the  word  “I”  is  worth  a 
lifetime  of  patient  practice.  It  is  a  more  diffi¬ 
cult  art  than  playing  the  violin,  and  we  do  not 
expect  to  master  the  violin  in  much  short  of  a 
life  time.  Thomas  A.  Edison  is  said  to  have 
spent  two  years  trying  to  make  the  first  phono¬ 
graph  pronounce  the  sound  “sh.”  How  much 
more  worth  while  it  is  to  teach  our  lips  to  pro¬ 
nounce  this  little  word  “I” — the  very  pivot  of 
all  our  speech! 

The  pitfalls  are  at  two  extremes.  It  is 
frequently  pronounced  either  as  a  shout  or  a 
murmur.  Both  are  wrong.  “I”  ought  not  to 
be  a  feeble  stammer,  a  whisper;  it  ought  to 
have  a  resonant  ring  of  affirmation.  The  de¬ 
velopment  of  a  distinct,  self-reliant,  independ¬ 
ent  personality  is  life’s  first  task.  The  Ger- 


212 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


man  philosopher  Fichte  gave  a  dinner  on  the 
day  on  which  his  little  boy  first  pronounced 
the  word  “ Ich  ”  It  was  a  landmark  well  worth 
marking  and  celebrating.  It  is  a  real  birth¬ 
day  for  anyone  when  he  can  say  “I”  and  have 
the  word  represent  a  resolute  personality,  not 
a  self-contained  unit,  but  in  his  place  among 
his  fellows.  The  crowd  is  a  great  steam  roller 
for  millions  of  people,  flattening  out  all  orig¬ 
inal  qualities,  leaving  them  much  like  a  row 
of  paper  dolls  all  cut  from  the  same  pattern. 
A  man’s  largest  contribution  to  the  community 
is  himself  at  his  best.  The  word  “I”  should 
always  be  more  than  a  murmured  echo. 

“1”  is  frequently  pronounced  too  often . 
Some  people  talk  about  themselves  so  much 
that  you  can  hear  I,  I,  I,  go  thumping  all  the 
way  through  their  conversation  like  a  rivet¬ 
ing  machine.  The  result  is  just  about  as 
melodious.  But  before  you  laugh  at  other 
people’s  ridiculous  egotism  stop  a  minute  in 
front  of  the  mirror.  Watch  yourself!  How 
often  do  you  use  the  word  yourself? 

How  much  of  your  conversation  with  others 
consists  of  “What  I  said” — “What  I  did”  and 
“What  I  thought”?  Do  you  carefully  watch 
the  eyes  of  the  people  you  are  talking  to,  to 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  213 


see  whether  they  are  getting  bored?  Better 
try  it.  Physicians  make  a  blood  test  to  see 
what  the  general  health  of  the  body  is.  So 
one’s  conversation  ought  td  be  tested  for  the 
presence  of  that  little  word  “I”  When  the 
personal  pronoun  comes  flocking  out  of  the 
mouth  in  great  droves  it  is  a  sure  sign  of 
ingrowing  egotism,  a  terrible  disease  fatal  to 
real  happiness  and  usefulness. 

A  few  years  ago  a  man  spent  the  summer 
with  a  friend  on  a  farm,  quite  a  distance  from 
the  railroad.  This  friend  sent  for  his  phono¬ 
graph  and  fifty  records.  On  the  way  up  from 
the  little  railroad  station,  the  box  containing 
the  records  slipped  from  the  buckboard  wagon 
and  tumbled  over  into  a  ravine  about  a  hun¬ 
dred  feet  below  the  road.  Out  of  that  box  of 
fifty  records,  forty-nine  were  broken  and  one 
was  saved!  Now,  this  man  is  as  patriotic  as 
the  average  American,  but  there  is  one  piece 
of  music  which  he  does  not  care  to  hear  again 
in  his  life.  That  is  “The  Stars  and  Stripes 
Forever.”  It  was  the  one  piece  that  was  saved. 
They  had  it  morning,  noon,  and  night.  They 
had  it  for  breakfast,  dinner,  and  supper.  Fi¬ 
nally  they  broke  it  in  sheer  desperation ! 

It  is  an  awful  thing  to  go  through  life  with 


214 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


just  one  record.  That  is  just  what  is  the 
matter  with  a  large  number  of  people.  They 
have  for  their  mind  and  heart  only  one  piece — 
“Me  forever !”  They  have  it  for  breakfast, 
dinner,  and  supper.  They  have  it  morning, 
noon,  and  night.  And  it  is  no  wonder  that 
life  gets  to  be  an  irritating,  tiresome  affair, 
as  jarring  to  themselves  as  to  others. 

Once  at  a  dinner  party  in  England  when 
Lord  Macaulay  was  monopolizing  the  conver¬ 
sation  with  one  of  his  long  monologues, 
Sydney  Smith  said,  gravely,  when  he  finished, 
“Macaulay,  when  I  am  dead  you  will  be  sorry 
you  never  heard  me  talk 1”  It  is  possible  for 
us  all  to  resemble  Macaulay  at  least  in  one 
particular. 

Frequently  the  little  word  “F’  is  pronounced 
too  loudly.  It  seems  to  shriek  of  “my  rights,” 
“my  importance”  and  “my  money.”  It  is  pro¬ 
nounced  as  though  it  were  written  in  italics, 
or  a  large  heavy,  black  letter  a  foot  high.  No 
matter  how  beautiful  or  pleasant  the  rest  of 
the  words  may  be,  if  there  is  sprinkled  among 
them  a  large  handful  of  big,  loud  “Us,”  the 
result  is  discord. 

The  clamorous  strife  in  the  world  is  a  hide¬ 
ous  discord,  but  it  is  all  made  up  of  mispro- 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  215 


nounced  “Fs”  pronounced  in  a  strident  shriek 
of  selfishness.  A  large  proportion  of  humanity 
is  good-natured  only  when  it  has  its  own  way. 
Carlyle  expressed  this  in  a  characteristic 
manner  in  a  personal  letter :  “You  may  hear 
it  said  of  me  that  I  am  cross-grained  and  dis¬ 
agreeable.  Dinna  believe  it.  Only  let  me  have 
my  own  way  exactly  in  everything,  with  all 
about  me  precisely  what  I  wish,  and  a  sunnier 
or  pleasanter  creature  does  not  live!” 

We  are  not  left  to  master  this  difficult  lesson 
in  pronunciation  alone.  We  have  the  divine 
curriculum  of  companionship  of  the  Head 
Master  of  life’s  school — Jesus.  It  is  with  him 
and  from  him  that  we  learn  to  change  the 
clamorous  discord  of  “I”  into  the  divine  har¬ 
mony  of  “we.” 

When  Jesus  taught  his  disciples  to  speak 
and  live  he  did  not  stress  the  word  “I.”  He 
said,  “After  this  manner  pray  ye — ■ Our 
Father.’  ”  The  secret  of  moral  advance  is  to 
transfer  interest  in  oneself  into  interest  in  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Through  his  grace  in  our 
lives  this  transfer  is  made  possible. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  has  expressed  truly 
the  Christian  relation  of  the  individual  to  soci¬ 
ety:  “A  man  should  stand  among  his  fellow 


216 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


men  as  one  coal  lies  in  a  fire  it  has  kindled, 
radiating  heat  but  lost  in  the  general  flame” 

III 

Can  you  pronounce  rightly  the  word  “they”? 
It  is  so  often  mispronounced.  That  is,  it  is 
a  little  word  which  is  often  used  to  divide  the 
speaker  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  as 
though  it  were  a  picket  fence.  For  one  thing 
it  is  a  word  which  we  use  to  escape  responsi¬ 
bility.  We  separate  ourselves  from  our  fellows 
and  say  with  an  injured  air,  “Why  don’t  ‘they’ 
do  this?”  or  “Why  don’t  ‘they’  do  that?”  when, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  not  “they”  who  are 
responsible.  It  is  “we”  So  in  politics  we 
blame  others  for  conditions  which  we  ourselves 
are  also  responsible.  It  is  so  in  the  church. 
We  ask  “Why  doesn’t  the  church  do  this  and 
that?”  A  much  more  fruitful,  as  well  as  a 
more  humbling,  question  would  be,  “How 
much  are  we  ourselves  doing  the  thing  we 
would  like  to  see  others  doing?” 

But  there  is  a  far  deeper  guilt  and  shame  in 
the  word.  It  is  a  separatist  word,  building 
walls  where  none  should  be  erected.  It  points 
the  finger  of  exclusiveness  and  shouts  con¬ 
temptuously,  “they,”  at  others  who  are  essen- 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  217 


tially  our  blood  brothers.  It  speaks  with  the 
accent  of  snobbishness. 

Racial  snobbishness  says  “they”  of  other 
races.  This  is  a  heyday  of  the  most  devilish 
snobbishness  in  the  world — race  snobbishness. 
A  fine  example  is  the  myth  of  so-called  “Nordic 
superiority.”  As  though  the  world  were  made 
for  the  white  man !  For  a  good  example  of  this 
white  snobbery  read  Lothrop  Stoddard’s  The 
Rising  Tide  of  Color  and  The  Revolt  Against 
Civilization .  There  are  many  things  in  these 
books  of  great  consequence,  many  problems 
which  are  bristling  with  difficulty.  But 
through  them  all  there  speaks  the  voice  of  the 
snob.  As  long  as  that  feeling  prevails,  dis¬ 
armament  conferences  are  an  impertinence. 
We  look  out  on  the  sad  spectacle  of  Europe 
to-day,  criss-crossed  by  little  fences  of  national 
hatred  and  jealousies.  Europe  will  either  rise 
or  fall  together. 

The  same  is  true  of  class  division.  The 
fundamental  grievance  of  labor  is  a  deeper 
thing  than  any  matter  of  hours  or  wages.  It 
is  against  the  snobbish  exclusive  attitude 
which  regards  the  laboring  man  as  “they”  in¬ 
stead  of  a  part  of  “we.”  As  Bishop  Gore  has 
well  said : 


218 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


The  real  cause  of  unrest  among  the  workers  is  not 
a  desire  for  higher  wages  or  shorter  hours,  but  a  deep 
resentment  of  an  attitude  toward  them  on  the  part  of 
society  which  seems  to  them  a  perpetual  insult  to  their 
personality. 

That  is  the  infamy  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan 
and  similar  expressions  of  racial,  political, 
and  religious  bigotry. 

Robert  Frost  sings,  “ Something  there  is  that 
does  not  love  a  wall.”  Something  indeed !  It 
is  the  love  of  God.  Jesus  had  no  use  for  little 
back  yards.  He  drew  men  out  of  exclusive¬ 
ness  into  the  main  highways  and  lead  them  as 
a  marching  brotherhood.  He  broke  down 
middle  walls  of  partition. 

In  these  days  when  so  many  class  walls  are 
being  erected,  we  must  shake  the  earth  anew 
with  the  message  and  spirit  of  Christ,  in  whom 
“there  is  neither  bond  nor  free,  Jew  nor  Greek, 
Cythian  nor  Barbarian,  but  all  one  in  him.” 
Too  many  partitions  are  being  erected. 

The  first  words  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  are  “We,  the  people.”  The  word 
“we”  is  a  strong  band  which  welds  people 
together.  When  we  draw  off  in  a  separate 
class  and  learn  to  say  “they”  instead  of  “we,” 
we  destroy  the  feeling  of  united  responsibility 


WORDS  MISPRONOUNCED  219 


and  brotherhood,  which  is  essential  to  the 
nation,  and  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Karle  Wilson  Baker  has  put  a  large  section 
of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  into  three  short  verses : 

“The  Lord  said, 

‘Say,  “We”’; 

But  I  shook  my  head, 

Hid  my  hands  tight  behind  my  back,  and  said, 
Stubbornly, 

‘I.’ 


The  Lord  said, 

‘Say,  “We”’; 

But  I  looked  upon  them  grimy  and  all  awry — 
Myself  in  all  those  twisted  shapes?  Ah,  no! 
Distastefully  I  turned  my  head  away, 

Persisting, 

‘They/ 

The  Lord  said, 

‘Say,  “We” 

And  I, 

At  last, 

Richer  "by  a  hoard 
Of  years  and  years, 

Looked  in  their  eyes  and  found  the  heavy  word 
That  bent  my  neck  and  bowed  my  head; 

Like  a  shamed  schoolboy  then  I  mumbled  low, 
‘We, 

Lord/ 


1  From  Poems,  by  Karle  Wilson  Baker.  Reprinted  by  permission  of 
Yale  University  Press.  „ 


220 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


If  we  learn  to  pronounce  rightly  and  use 
rightly  these  three  short  words,  we  need  not 
worry  very  much  about  the  seven  thousand 
long  ones. 


XY 


THE  IMPULSE  OF  THE  RESURRECTION 

“She  runneth  therefore ”■ — John  20.  2 

SMALL  wonder!  The  fact  of  the  resurrec¬ 
tion  struck  the  mind  of  Mary  with  a  force 
that  carried  her  along  as  though  she  were 
a  projectile  hurled  by  a  gun. 

Every  few  months  the  newspapers  tell  us 
that  the  most  powerful  explosive  known  to 
man  has  been  invented,  an  explosive  of  such 
terrific  force  that  it  will  hurl  many  tons  miles 
through  the  air  (the  tonnage  and  the  mile¬ 
age  increasing  with  each  announcement ) .  But 
that  is  all  just  a  newspaper  exaggeration.  For 
the  most  explosive  force  known  to  man  is  the 
impact  of  the  idea  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
as  it  strikes  the  mind  and  heart  of  humanity. 
It  has  thrown  men  by  its  force  twenty -five 
thousand  miles  around  the  globe  and  has 
shaken  the  earth  for  nineteen  centuries. 

It  is  no  accident  or  mere  coincidence  that  in 
every  one  of  the  four  Gospels  the  story  of  the 
resurrection  is  the  story  of  a  footrace.  When 

221 


222 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


we  bring  all  the  Gospel  accounts  together  we 
have  a  swift  succession  of  footraces.  The 
thrill  of  the  glad  news,  even  before  the  heart 
was  sure  it  was  true,  was  so  overwhelming  that 
it  started  every  one  who  heard  it  running. 

The  finest  picture  of  the  first  Easter  which 
the  imagination  has  ever  conceived  is  not  a 
picture  of  the  empty  tomb  or  even  of  the  risen 
Christ.  It  is  a  picture  of  two  faces,  the  faces 
of  Peter  and  John  as  they  raced  to  the  tomb. 
Into  their  strained  eyes  filled  with  wonder 
there  seems  compressed  the  trembling  hope  of 
the  whole  world. 

Those  Easter  footraces  of  the  disciples  well 
portray  the  most  significant  fact  about  the 
resurrection — that  it  brings  a  new  impulse  and 
movement  to  human  life.  When  the  meaning 
of  the  victory  of  Christ  breaks  over  the  mind 
life  is  no  longer  a  walk.  It  leaps  and  bounds. 

Great  good  news  simply  cannot  walk.  The 
word  “Marathon”  suggests  to  us  not  so  much 
the  battle  in  Greece  as  the  runner  who  sped 
forty  miles  with  the  news,  well  content  to 
drop  dead  at  the  end,  if  he  could  but  gasp  out 
the  word,  “Victory!” 

Our  hearts  rush  out  to  grasp  the  assurance 
of  endless  life  which  the  resurrection  of  Christ 


IMPULSE  OF  RESURRECTION  223 


brings.  When  Mary  made  her  way  to  the 
sepulcher,  still  engulfed  in  the  gloom  of  Cal¬ 
vary,  the  startling  wonder  of  the  empty  tomb 
quickened  her  step.  “She  runneth  therefore,” 
the  Gospel  of  John  tells  us.  How  could  she 
help  it?  So  the  heart  leaps  to  meet  the  news 
of  Christ’s  victory  over  death. 

One  of  the  traditions  of  the  Cathedral  of 
Winchester  in  England  is  the  story  of  how  the 
news  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  first  re¬ 
ceived.  It  came  by  a  sailing  ship  to  the  south 
coast  of  England  and  by  signal  flags  was  wig¬ 
wagged  to  London.  When  the  message  reached 
Winchester,  the  signals  on  top  of  the  cathedral 
began  to  spell  the  message,  “W-e-l-l-i-n-g-t-o-n 
d-e-f-e-a-t-e-d,”  and  then  fog  descended  and  hid 
the  signals  from  view.  The  sad  news  of  the 
incomplete  message  went  on  to  London.  When 
the  message  was  read,  “Wellington  defeated,” 
the  whole  country  was  in  despair;  But  after 
a  while  the  fog  lifted  and  the  signals  on  the 
Winchester  cathedral  were  still  at  work  spell¬ 
ing  out  the  complete  sentence,  “W-e-l-l-i-n-g- 
t-o-n  d-e-f-e-a-t-e-d  t-h-e  e-n-e-m-y.”  The  thrill¬ 
ing  news  raced  across  the  land  and  lifted  all 
hearts  out  of  gloom  into  joy.  “Wellington 
defeated  the  enemy !” 


224 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


So  the  heavy  gloom  of  Calvary  fled  before 
the  victory  of  the  resurrection.  Out  of  the 
dark  shadows  of  the  tomb  our  hearts  leap  up 
at  the  news  of  victory.  The  resurrection  puts 
the  seal  of  reality  on  the  great  central  truth 
of  Jesus — that  we  are  children  of  God,  with  a 
personal  infinite,  eternal  value  for  him  which 
shall  never  be  lost. 

It  is  in  that  truth  of  God’s  Fatherhood  that 
we  find  the  abiding  reason  for  faith  in  immor¬ 
tality.  If  you  are  actually  God’s  child— -what 
other  can  ever  conceivably  take  your  place? 
It  is  perfectly  reasonable  that  God  might  cre¬ 
ate  another  world — another  universe,  to  re¬ 
place  this  one.  But  what  could  replace  a 
child  f  Susanna  Wesley  had  nineteen  children. 
That  is  a  good  many  even  for  so  notoriously 
competent  a  mother.  It  is  highly  probable 
that  she  got  their  clothes  mixed  on  occasion. 
But  do  you  imagine  she  ever  got  them  mixed  ? 
Did  Samuel  sort  of  fade  into  John  and  was 
Charles  a  misty  blending  of  both?  Would  she 
have  cared  little  if  one  slipped  out  of  her  life, 
finding  ready  comfort  in  the  fact  that  she  had 
eighteen  left?  If  you  have  any  doubt  about 
it,  read  her  letters  to  her  children.  Each  one 
had  his  own  individual  place  that  none  of  the 


IMPULSE  OF  RESURRECTION  225 


others,  that  not  all  eighteen  together  could  fill. 
A  child  is  unique  and  irreplaceable.  How  much 
more  must  the  Fatherhood  of  God  imply  an 
eternal  place  in  the  father’s  heart  for  each 
child ! 

The  impulse  of  Easter  puts  a  new  momen¬ 
tum  in  life  here  on  earth,  for  it  puts  a  new 
value  in  it.  The  largest  message  of  Jesus  is 
not  to  tell  us  how  long  life  lasts  but  what  it  is. 
Jesus  did  not  come  back  to  tell  us  that  life 
goes  on;  he  came  to  do  far  more  than  that. 
He  came  to  tell  us  what  real  life  is,  here, 
there,  or  anywhere.  Eternal  life  is  not  quan¬ 
tity  of  life  but  quality  of  life.  It  is  here  and 
now  that  we  may  live  in  the  power  of  an  end¬ 
less  life.  Here  and  now  we  may  find  fellow¬ 
ship  with  God  and  a  share  in  his  great  onward- 
moving  purposes. 

Dorothy  Canfield  sets  this  truth  in  a  memor¬ 
able  sonnet : 

“We  call  this  time,  and  gauge  it  by  the  clock 
Deep  in  such  insect  cares  as  suit  that  view. 

As  whether  dresses  fit,  what  modes  are  new, 

And  where  to  buy  and  when  to  barter  stock — 

We  think  we  hold,  based  on  some  Scripture  rock, 
Claims  on  immortal  life  to  press  when  due. 
Imagining  some  door  between  the  two, 

Our  deaths  shall  each,  with  presto  change,  unlock. 


226 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


But  this  is  also  everlasting  life: 

On  Monday  in  the  kitchen,  street  or  store 
We  are  immortal,  we,  the  man  and  wife, 

Immortal  now,  or  shall  be  never  more, 

Immortals  in  immortal  values  spend 

These  lives  that  shall  no  more  begin  than  end.”* 

Eternal  life  is  self-forgetfulness  in  the  great 
purposes  of  God.  This  new  understanding  of 
life  strikes  from  our  limbs  the  ball  and  chain 
of  slavery  to  self.  It  raises  the  bed-ridden  will 
to  new  power  and  bids  us  walk  in  the  name  of 
Christ. 

Into  our  life  to-day — if  we  will  bare  our 
heart  and  mind  to  it,  this  amazing  explosive 
of  the  resurrection  will  bring  a  resilient  bound 
and  leap.  Bliss  Perry  says  “Easter  begins, 
like  all  deep  things,  in  mystery  and  it  ends, 
like  all  high  things,  in  a  great  courage.”  It 
transforms  human  relations  from  the  acquain¬ 
tanceship  of  a  short  railway  journey  soon  to 
be  ended  to  a  fellowship  of  eternal  value.  “The 
tomb  is  not  a  blind  alley ;  it  is  a  thoroughfare.” 

A  recent  critic  has  playfully  recorded  the 
effect  which  reading  H.  G.  Wells  has  upon 
him :  “No  matter  how  discouraging  things 
seem  when  I  pick  up  a  Wells’  book,  or  how 

1  From  The  Real  Motive,  by  Dorothy  Canfield.  Reprinted  by  permission 
Henry  Holt  and  Company. 


IMPULSE  OF  RESURRECTION  227 


averse  I  may  be  to  launching  out  on  a  crusade 
of  any  sort,  I  always  end  by  walking  with 
a  firm  step  to  the  door  (feeling,  somehow,  that 
I  have  grown  quite  a  bit  taller  and  much  hand¬ 
somer)  and  saying,  quietly:  ‘Meadows,  my 
suit  of  armor,  please;  the  one  with  a  chain- 
mail  shirt  and  a  purple  plume.’  This,  of 
course,  is  silly,  as  any  of  Mr.  Wells’  critics 
will  tell  you.  It  is  the  effect  that  he  has  on 
irresponsible,  visionary  minds.  But  if  all  the 
irresponsible,  visionary  minds  in  the  world 
became  sufficiently  belligerent  through  a  con¬ 
tinued  reading  of  Mr.  Wells,  or  even  of  the 
New  Testament,  who  knows  but  what  they 
may  become  just  practical  enough  to  take  a 
hand  at  running  things?  They  couldn’t  do 
much  worse  than  the  responsible,  practical 
minds  have  done,  could  they?” 

In  a  very  high  and  reverent  sense  the  gospel 
of  Jesus  and  the  resurrection  send  men  into 
warfare  with  a  quickened  heart.  At  his  “All 
Hail !”  we  call  for  our  suit  of  armor  and  leap 
into  the  fight.  We  know  that  our  labor  is  not 
vain  in  the  Lord.  He  has  overcome  the  world, 
and  his  kingdom  is  an  everlasting  kingdom. 
It  is  tremendously  worth  while  to  fight  against 
any  odds,  for  life  is  stronger  than  death,  love 


228 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


is  stronger  than  hate,  truth  is  stronger  than 
lies. 

“Where  does  your  great  river  go?”  David 
Livingstone  would  frequently  ask  the  natives 
of  the  interior  of  Africa,  pointing  to  the 
Congo.  “It  is  lost  in  the  sands,”  they  always 
answered  him.  They  had  never  seen  the  sea 
to  which  the  river  surely  and  irresistibly  made 
its  way.  “Where  does  all  your  labor  and  effort 
go?”  we  frequently  ask  ourselves.  And  in 
moods  of  discouragement  and  fatigue  the 
answer  comes,  “It  is  lost  in  the  sands !”  The 
victory  of  Jesus  brings  to  our  ears  the  roar 
of  the  distant  sea,  the  assurance  that  our  labor 
is  not  lost  or  void  but  is  joined  to  the  divine 
power  of  righteousness  destined  to  conquer 
the  world. 

With  this  full  conception  of  eternal  life  in 
mind,  what  a  pathetic  thing  it  is  to  see  so 
many  people  to-day  trying  to  spell  out  its 
meaning  with  a  ouija  board !  The  worst  defect 
of  spiritualism  is  its  utter  lack  of  any  moral 
quality,  any  power  to  quicken  or  ennoble  life. 
Even  were  any  trustworthy  evidence  for  sur¬ 
vival  adduced  (which  has  not  yet  appeared), 
what  a  pitiable  fragmentary  substitute  spir¬ 
itualism  would  be  for  the  fullness  of  a  Christ- 


IMPULSE  OF  RESURRECTION  229 


filled  life !  Perhaps  the  most  trenchant  indict¬ 
ment  of  the  present  spiritualistic  craze  has 
come  from  Jerome  K.  Jerome,  to  whom  we 
already  owe  a  powerful  portrayal  of  the  spirit 
of  Christ  in  modern  life  in  The  Passing  of  the 
Third  Floor  Back.  He  says : 

With  gladness  would  I  accept  a  new  religion  “founded 
upon  human  reason  on  this  side  and  upon  spirit  inspir¬ 
ation  upon  the  other.”  But  what  are  we  offered?  On 
this  side  the  darkened  room,  the  ubiquitous  tambou¬ 
rine,  the  hired  medium  (sometimes  “detected  in  trick¬ 
ery”  and  sometimes  not)  now  tied  into  a  chair  and 
now  locked  up  in  an  iron  cage;  the  futile  messages, 
proved  frequently  to  be  “concoctions,”  vague  prophe¬ 
cies  of  the  kind  that  we  can  read  in  any  Old  Moore's 
Almanac.  These  things  do  not  appeal  to  my  reason. 

Where  is  this  “new  religion”?  What  does  spiritual¬ 
ism  preach?  Or  is  it  content  with  the  world  as  it  is? 
I  take  the  last  five  years.  Has  spiritualism  done  any¬ 
thing — is  it  doing  anything — to  help  men  to  be  less 
brutal,  less  hypocritical,  less  greedy?  Has  it  done  any¬ 
thing — is  it  doing  anything — to  lessen  the  appalling 
wickedness  that  is  threatening,  like  some  foul  weed, 
to  poison  the  whole  earth? 

What  has  spiritualism  done — what  is  it  doing — to 
help  mankind  to  recover  its  sense,  its  manhood,  to 
rescue  its  soul  from  being  withered  by  lust  and 
passion? 

That  ethical  and  spiritual  test  is  fatal.  But 
it  is  just  there  that  the  largest  meaning  of 
Christ’s  victory  over  death  is  found.  We  go 


230 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


back  to  life  from  tbe  open  tomb  with  a  new 
exhilaration  and  a  new  power  for  daily  living. 

A  new  thrill  of  movement  comes  into  life 
as  we  return  to  it  with  the  experience  of  the 
risen  Christ  in  our  hearts.  The  news  is  so 
great  and  glad  that  we  must  run  to  communi¬ 
cate  it.  The  same  irresistible  impulse  that  set 
the  disciples’  feet  flying  along  the  road  puts 
every  life  which  discovers  the  meaning  of  the 
resurrection  into  swift  and  exuberant  motion. 

The  disciples  running  back  from  the  empty 
tomb  to  carry  the  news  were  the  first  of  an 
endless  succession  of  runners  all  with  the 
same  trembling  joy  in  their  hearts  and  the 
same  free  leap  in  their  feet.  Paul  meets  his 
risen  Lord  and  runs  with  the  news  the  rest 
of  his  life.  The  prison  chains  on  his  feet  were 
never  strong  enough  to  bind  his  spirit.  We 
find  him  writing  from  his  little  cell  about 
“whensoever  I  go  to  Spain” — building  castles 
in  Spain  of  adventure  for  Christ  in  what  was 
then  the  farthest  limit  of  the  world.  Follow¬ 
ing  the  three  Marys  who  first  discovered  the 
empty  tomb  and  ran  with  the  joyous  news, 
there  came  along  centuries  later  three  other 
Marys,  worthy  to  follow  in  their  train,  Mary 
Moffat,  Mary  Livingstone,  and  Mary  Slessor, 


IMPULSE  OF  RESURRECTION  231 


who  had  met  their  risen  Lord  and  ran  joyfully 
along  the  long,  dark  trail  that  led  into  the 
center  of  Africa  to  tell  the  overwhelming  news. 
Or,  to  mention  only  one  more  among  millions, 
James  Chalmers  received  such  an  impetus 
from  his  vision  of  the  risen  Christ  that  he 
leaped  to  the  end  of  a  long  road  that  led  to 
the  savage  island  of  the  South  Seas,  New 
Guinea,  well  content  that,  like  the  runner 
from  Marathon,  he  could  give  his  life  to  carry 
the  word,  “Victory!” 

What  does  the  Christian  faith  of  immortal¬ 
ity  mean  to  us  to-day?  Surely,  it  must  mean 
such  a  fresh  amazement  at  the  victory  of 
Christ  over  sin  and  death  that  a  sober,  digni¬ 
fied,  leisurely  walk  will  not  be  possible.  We 
must  break  into  an  apostolic  stride,  with  Peter 
and  Mary  and  John,  and  with  eager  heart  and 
flying  feet  carry  to  the  last  and  farthest  of 
God’s  children  the  news  of  the  eternal  victory 
of  Christ. 


XVI 


IN  A  WORLD  OP  TANGENTS 

“In  whom  all  things  hold  together” — Colos- 
sians  1.  17  (Moffatt’s  Translation). 

SAINT  PAUL’S  conception  of  Christ  as  the 
one  “in  whom  all  things  hold  together”  is 
a  timely  gospel  for  a  world  which  is  splitting 
apart. 

It  is  an  arresting  interpretation  of  the  sig¬ 
nificance  of  Christ.  The  words  “hold  together” 
are  a  marginal  reading,  one  of  those  search¬ 
lights  set  in  the  margin  of  the  Bible  which 
throw  a  flood  of  white  light  over  a  page.  The 
reading,  “In  him  all  things  consist,”  is  more 
familiar,  but  the  word  “consist”  has  lost  most 
of  its  picturesque,  primary  meaning.  The  large 
conception  which  Paul  had  of  Christ  strikes 
the  imagination  with  greater  force  when  more 
literally  rendered,  as  by  Moffatt,  “In  whom  all 
things  cohere,”  or  “Through  him  the  universe 
is  a  harmonious  whole.” 

232 


IN  A  WORLD  OP  TANGENTS  233 


This  conception  of  Christ  as  the  cohesive 
force  of  the  world  acquires  larger  significance 
as  the  years  pass.  Never,  surely,  did  it  appear 
as  a  more  timely  and  needed  gospel  than  to¬ 
day.  We  live  to-day  in  a  world  of  tangents. 
Innumerable  smaller  and  larger  groups, 
forces,  and  nations  are  going  off  on  tangents, 
pulling  in  their  own  direction,  away  from  the 
center  of  common  welfare.  The  war  has 
affected  the  world,  naturally  and  inevitably, 
like  a  high  explosive  shell,  scattering  frag¬ 
ments  in  all  directions,  and  filling  the  sky  with 
head-on  collisions, 

A  fascinating  speculation  of  our  childhood 
days  was,  “What  would  happen  if  gravitation 
should  suddenly  cease  to  work?”  It  was  an 
interesting  problem  for  the  imagination  to 
picture  what  a  hurly-burly  it  would  make 
when  each  person  and  building  and  object  was 
shot  off  the  earth  into  endless  space  at  its 
particular  tangent.  We  can  form  some  idea 
of  a  world  without  gravitation  merely  by  look¬ 
ing  out  of  the  window  at  almost  any  section 
of  a  distracted  world.  The  spirit  of  Christ, 
which  is  the  spirit  of  love,  is  the  cohesive 
power,  the  gravitation  of  the  moral  world,  and 
when  that  power  ceases  to  work,  an  anarchy 


234 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  turmoil,  in  more  or  less  degree,  between 
individuals,  classes,  and  groups  is  the  result. 

The  war,  of  course,  was  the  stupendous 
demonstration  of  a  world  where  the  necessary 
cohesive  power  failed;  but  the  demonstration 
did  not  end  at  the  armistice  or  the  signing  of 
the  treaty.  Nor  has  it  ended  four  years  later. 
It  has  merely  developed  new  varieties.  It 
merely  spread  out  into  some  new  forms.  The 
forces  which  pull  apart,  which  split  the  har¬ 
monious  whole  which  is  God’s  goal  for  the 
world,  are  still  rampant  and  must  be  subdued 
by  the  grip  of  Him  in  whom  all  things  hold 
together. 

The  need  and  the  power  of  the  cohesive  force 
of  love  in  all  human  associations  are  seen 
vividly  in  a  field  near  and  familiar  to  all  of 
us — the  family.  Few  things  are  more  exqui¬ 
site  torture  to  the  nerves  than  a  piano  badly 
out  of  tune,  where  every  note  goes  in  for  self- 
determination  without  reference  to  the  har¬ 
mony  or  discord  it  makes  with  the  other  notes. 
A  family  not  bound  together  by  love  is  like  a 
piano  out  of  tune.  It  makes  a  jangling  dis¬ 
cord  in  which  the  strident  notes  of  “I”  and 
“me”  sound  shrilly.  The  selfish  notes  of  “my 
time,”  “my  rights,”  “my  room”  are  never 


IN  A  WORLD  OF  TANGENTS  235 


melted  into  the  harmony  of  “our  home.”  The 
beautiful  melody  of  “Home,  Sweet  Home,” 
can  never  be  rendered  by  hearts  that  are  tuned 
to  self. 

Selfishness  is  a  dissolving  power  in  one’s 
personal  character  as  well  as  in  society.  The 
saving  of  a  soul  means  salvation  from  the  dis¬ 
solving  influence  of  a  selfish  life.  Selfishness 
is  sure  to  issue  in  a  dissolution  of  moral 
energy,  in  what  is  significantly  named  a  dis¬ 
solute  moral  character. 

The  same  crying  need  of  a  cohesive  power 
sufficient  to  hold  things  together  runs  through 
all  the  wider  relationships  of  life.  A  profiteer 
is  an  individual  who  has  gone  off  on  a  selfish 
tangent,  pulled  away  from  the  center  of  the 
common  rights.  He  is  a  disintegrating  force 
in  society,  as  all  selfishness  is  disintegrating. 

And  what  a  desperate  need  the  world  of 
industry  has  for  him  in  whom  all  things  hold 
together!  It  is  an  arena  of  clashing  forces. 
At  one  extreme  is  the  Bourbon  whose  one 
answer  to  all  the  demands  of  the  workers  is, 
“Shoot  them  down !”  At  the  other  extreme  is 
the  radical  whose  equally  simple  formula  is, 
“Blow  them  up!”  Even  where  the  positions 
taken  are  not  nearly  so  extreme,  in  multitudes 


236 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  cases,  both  employer  and  employee  have 
moved  off  on  a  tangent  of  selfish  advantage 
unrelated  to  common  welfare  or  justice.  We 
have  many  capitalists  who  cling  to  their  ad¬ 
vantages,  however  gained,  untouched  by  any 
broad  considerations  of  social  welfare.  And 
we  have  the  revolutionists,  who  in  the  valor 
of  ignorance  and  the  ardor  of  hatred,  like  a 
blind  Samson,  would  topple  over  the  pillars 
which  hold  up  civilization.  We  of  this  amaz¬ 
ing  age  of  mechanical  progress  are  neverthe¬ 
less  of  all  men  most  miserable  if  in  this 
splitting  world  of  industry  we  cannot  bring  to 
bear  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  fill  industrial  re¬ 
lations  with  both  justice  and  love.  He  alone, 
amid  all  the  bristling  occasions  of  discord,  can 
hold  men  in  harmony. 

As  we  move  out  to  that  larger  field  of  inter¬ 
national  relationships,  so  baffling  and  alarm¬ 
ing  to-day,  the  aching  need  of  an  Ordainer  of 
harmony  intensifies.  As  a  boy  I  used  to  won¬ 
der  what  “the  European  concert,”  of  which  we 
read  so  much,  was  really  like.  Since  1914  we 
have  had  ample  opportunity  to  find  out.  The 
European  concert,  that  balanced  orchestration 
of  the  hates  and  powers  of  nations,  was  a 
rendering  of  the  Death  March  by  an  orchestra 


IN  A  WORLD  OF  TANGENTS  237 


of  Hell,  with  instruments  varying  all  the  way 
from  the  shrill  piccolo  of  the  machine  gun  to 
the  bassoon  of  a  forty-two-centimeter  cannon. 
Algernon  West,  in  his  Reminiscences,  tells  of 
an  American  lady  who,  on  her  arrival  in 
London,  wrote  to  her  embassy  that  she  was 
passionately  fond  of  music  and  desired  to 
know  what  opportunities  would  be  open  to  her 
to  gratify  her  taste.  She  said  that  in  particu¬ 
lar  she  wished  to  attend  the  “European  con¬ 
cert77 — provided  that  it  was  an  entertainment 
to  which  she  could  safely  take  her  daughter! 
It  was  emphatically  not  that!  It  was  not  an 
entertainment  to  which  nations  could  safely 
take  their  sons,  though  they  did  eventually  take 
them  by  the  millions,  to  perish  to  the  scream¬ 
ing  oratorio  of  hate. 

H.  G.  Wells,  in  his  novel  The  Time 
Machine,  written  many  years  ago,  drew  a 
fantastic  imaginary  picture  of  the  havoc 
wrought  in  the  world  by  the  invention  of  a 
devilish  machine  which  could  counteract  the 
power  of  gravitation.  The  war  translated  that 
wild  fancy  into  hideous  fact.  It  disclosed 
such  a  machine.  It  was  militarism  controlled 
by  greed,  by  national  selfishness,  by  hate. 
That  machine  counteracted  the  power  of  moral 


238 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


and  spiritual  gravitation  which  is  the  Chris¬ 
tian  spirit  of  brotherhood  and  love. 

To-day  the  situation  is  hardly  relieved  at  all. 
The  danger  spots  of  the  world  are  greatly  in¬ 
creased  in  number,  the  zones  of  friction  length¬ 
ened.  A  recent  traveler  through  Europe  says 
it  ought  to  be  called  “.The  United  Hates  of 
Europe.” 

Fires  of  hatred  merely  banked,  not  put  out ; 
national  ambitions  running  at  right  angles  to 
one  another;  the  grave  enigmas  of  Russia, 
China,  Turkey,  and  India— what  earthly 
power  or  wit  can  hold  these  in  harmony?  He 
alone  who  can  draw  the  hearts  of  men,  all  men, 
with  the  divine  compulsion  of  love. 

“Why  don’t  the  stars  hit  each  other?”  asked 
a  little  seven-year- old  of  his  father.  Why  not? 
It  is  a  pertinent  question.  For  just  one  reason. 
They  are  all  related  to  one  center.  They  all 
feel  and  obey  the  pull  of  the  sun,  in  whom  all 
things  hold  together.  As  they  are  adjusted 
to  that  one  center,  they  move  in  harmonious 
adjustment  to  one  another.  There  is  none 
other  name  given  in  heaven  or  on  earth 
whereby  men  must  be  saved  from  the  disinte¬ 
gration  of  clashing  selfishness  but  Christ. 
Only  as  men  come  into  obedience  to  him  do 


IN  A  WORLD  OF  TANGENTS  239 


they  work  out  a  lasting  harmony  with  one 
another. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  expedients 
brought  out  by  those  who  deny  that  Christian¬ 
ity  is  an  effective  means  of  peace.  In  many 
instances  it  is  a  case  of  “throwing  the  Bible 
away  and  quoting  from  memory.”  Bertrand 
Russell  says  that  “Christ’s  teachings  are 
wholly  inadequate  to  the  situation”  (securing 
peace),  and  goes  on  naively  to  add,  “Our  only 
hope  is  to  diminish  the  impulses  that  center 
around  possession  ”  What  an  effective  sum¬ 
mary  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus !  Could  any  labored 
treatise  do  much  better  as  an  expression  of 
the  core  of  Christian  teaching  on  wealth  than 
this  incidental  statement?  Yet  this  bit  of 
wisdom  is  adduced  in  support  of  the  argument 
that  “Christ’s  teachings  are  wholly  inade¬ 
quate.”  Try  as  he  may  to  avoid  it,  Mr.  Russell 
has  a  slightly  reminiscent  sound! 

This  is  no  time  for  Christians  to  tolerate 
an  apologetic  mood.  It  is  time  for  a  command¬ 
ing  assertion  of  a  Christ  who  is  the  world’s 
unifying  force.  But  a  proclamation  of  that 
unifying  Christ  must  be  more  than  an  asser¬ 
tion  to  be  commanding.  It  must  be  an  incar¬ 
nation.  Into  personal,  industrial,  and  inter- 


240 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


national  relations  we  must  carry  that  spirit  of 
love  and  of  justice  and  service  which  is 

“The  golden  cord 
Close  binding  all  mankind.” 

The  rays  of  the  sun  are  invisible  until  they 
strike  upon  some  object.  The  unifying  power 
of  Christ,  if  it  is  to  be  recognized  and  yielded 
to,  must  be  made  visible  in  lives  that  catch 
and  embody  it. 


XVII 


’A  MATTER  OF  MORALE 

“Strengthened  with  might  hy  his  spirit  in  the 
inner  man.”— Ephesians,  3.  16 

THE  Great  War  has  plowed  deep  furrows 
through  our  daily  speech.  It  has  put 
many  new  words  into  universal  circulation. 
Many  of  these  words  have  already  been  worn 
smooth  by  the  thoughtless  turning  of  human 
phonographs.  But  some  will  remain  in  our 
vocabulary  as  landmarks  of  the  great  struggle. 

The  word  “morale”  will  probably  have  the 
permanent  significance  of  marking  a  new  val¬ 
uation  of  the  spiritual  factors  of  life.  The 
emergence  of  “morale”  in  the  world’s  thought 
and  speech  records  the  significant  discovery 
that  in  the  greatest  massing  of  material  things 
the  world  has  ever  seen  the  deciding  factors 
were  not  things,  not  steel  and  TXT,  but  spirit. 

Of  course  the  war  emphasized  the  power  of 
material  things.  The  ironclad  tank,  crashing 

241 


242 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


its  way  like  a  Juggernaut  breathing  out  fiery 
death,  was  a  fit  symbol  of  material  might. 
But  behind  the  steel  and  against  the  steel  was 
something  greater — spirit.  The  force  that 
welded  the  scattered  and  diverse  fragments  of 
our  nation  into  a  unified  force  was  in  the 
souls  of  men. 

This  lesson,  which  has  sunk  deep,  has  large 
meaning  for  that  war  that  never  ends,  the  cam¬ 
paign  of  the  Son  of  God  that  stretches  out 
along  a  grim  fighting  line  around  the  earth, 
against  the  strongholds  of  night  and  sin,  to 
establish  his  kingdom  of  righteousness,  joy 
and  peace.  If  our  thinking  is  Christlike  in 
pattern  and  dimensions,  it  bears  on  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  the  Kingdom.  We  seek  the  deep¬ 
ening  and  enrichment  of  our  spiritual  life,  not 
for  the  sake  of  nursing  what  Milton  calls  “a 
fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue,  unexercised  and 
unbreathed,  that  never  sallies  out  and  sees  her 
adversary,”  but  to  develop  the  morale  of  the 
Kingdom.  For  morale  is  to  the  mind  and 
spirit  what  health  is  to  the  body:  it  is  both 
fighting  power  and  staying  power. 

We  can  do  nothing  of  more  far-reaching 
effect  than  to  understand  afresh  and  reestab¬ 
lish  in  our  lives  those  inner  conditions  of  spirit 


A  MATTER  OF  MORALE 


243 


and  mind  which  will  give  us  both  thrust  and 
staying  power  in  the  work  of  the  Kingdom. 

1.  A  knowledge  of  the  aims  of  the  war . 
Recent  experience  has  emphasized  how  funda¬ 
mental  to  the  vigor  of  any  fighting  force  is  a 
knowledge  of  the  aims  of  the  war.  Our  gov¬ 
ernment  conducted  a  massive  educational 
campaign  in  the  army  on  “Why  We  Are  at 
War,”  because  it  realized  that  a  man  who  knew 
what  he  was  fighting  for  and  felt  the  cause 
individually  was  literally  a  superman.  He 
was  a  soldier  plus.  He  was  worth  anywhere 
from  a  man  and  a  half  to  five  men.  The  church 
needs  nothing  so  much  as  “supermen”  who  feel 
Christ’s  cause  as  their  own.  A  great  many 
members  of  the  church  have  never  keenly 
realized  that  any  war  is  going  on.  A  woman 
in  London  passed  through  the  five  years  of  the 
war  without  ever  having  heard  of  it.  She  was 
over  one  hundred  years  of  age  and  in  order  to 
save  her  anguish  her  family  managed  to  keep 
her  in  entire  ignorance  of  the  conflict.  All 
the  time  that  Zeppelins  were  dropping  bombs 
over  the  city  and  the  very  guns  at  the  front 
were  audible,  she  was  blissfully  living  on  in 
the  world  before  the  war. 

Many  have  just  about  the  same  knowledge 


244 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


of  the  campaigns  of  Jesus  Christ  now  waged 
in  the  world.  Many  Christians  have  not  en¬ 
listed  for  anything  but  a  rest  camp.  They 
throng  the  bases  in  uniform  but  they  do  not 
go  up  into  the  line.  They  are  “absent  without 
leave”  both  from  heavy  firing  and  heavy  haul¬ 
ing.  May  we  not  help  to  recover  for  ourselves 
and  the  church  a  burning  knowledge  of 
Christ’s  aims,  of  that  love  of  God  which 
reaches  out  to  the  least,  the  last,  and  the  lost, 
and  seeks  to  redeem  every  barren  tract  of  life? 

Fortified  with  such  an  intense  knowledge, 
we  make  our  own  the  battle  prayer  of  Richard 
Watson  Gilder : 

“Lead  me,  yea,  lead  me  deeper  into  life, 

This  suffering,  human  life  wherein  thou  liv’st 
And  breathest  still,  and  holdst  thy  way  divine. 

'Tis  here,  O  pitying  Christ,  where  thee  I  seek, 

Here  where  the  strife  is  fiercest;  where  the  sun 
Beats  down  upon  the  highway  thronged  with  men, 

And  in  the  raging  mart,  O!  deeper  lead 
My  soul  into  the  living  world  of  souls 
Where  thou  dost  move.” 1 


John  Drinkwater,  in  his  play,  “ Abraham 
Lincoln,”  pictures  Lincoln  alone  in  his  room 

1  From  Poems  o/  Richard  Watson  Gilder.  Reprinted  by  permission  of 
Houghton,  Mifflin  Company,  publishers. 


A  MATTER  OF  MORALE 


245 


in  the  White  House  at  a  moment  of  great  crisis 
in  the  Civil  War,  looking  intently  at  a  large 
map  of  the  United  States  which  hangs  on  the 
wall.  Into  that  look  is  concentrated  his  in¬ 
tense  love  for  the  Union  and  his  passionate 
desire  to  preserve  it  whole.  Under  the  weight 
of  the  task  and  responsibility  he  sinks  to  his 
knees  in  prayer.  As  one  feels  the  genuine 
emotion  of  the  scene,  the  thought  arises,  What 
if  we  could  look  on  the  map  of  our  town,  our 
country,  the  world,  with  something  of  the 
same  throbbing  love,  the  same  desire  to  save? 
Suppose  we  looked  out  on  our  neighborhood 
and  realized  the  objectives  which  Jesus  Christ 
has  there,  the  things  he  is  trying  to  do  right 
there,  for  its  men  and  women,  its  children,  its 
life.  Or,  sending  our  eyes  and  heart  on  a 
wider  circuit,  suppose  we  looked  out  on  the 
world  Christ  died  to  save  with  an  eagerness 
akin  to  his,  making  our  own  his  great  aims 
and  desires  for  the  defrauded  and  unprivileged 
children  of  God!  Would  it  not  bring  into  our 
hearts  a  new  animation  and  into  our  lives  a 
new  fighting  morale  for  the  Kingdom? 

2.  The  impulse  of  a  real  experience.  Fight¬ 
ing  and  staying  power  in  the  soldier  is  built 
out  of  an  experience  of  genuine  love  of  country. 


246 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


Rupert  Brooke  lias  sung  that  impulse  of  a 
great  love  in  immortal  words : 

“If  I  should  die,  think  only  this  of  me, 

That  there’s  some  corner  of  a  foreign  field 
That  is  forever  England.” 


The  spirit  that  breathes  in  these  words  is 
the  spirit  that  creates  fortitude  in  the  king¬ 
dom  of  God.  How  far  will  a  bullet  go  before 
the  pull  of  earth  draws  it  down?  It  all  de¬ 
pends  on  the  force  of  the  explosion  which  sped 
it  on  its  way.  How  far  is  a  life  going  to  move 
in  the  service  of  God  before  weariness  and 
opposition  overcome  it?  It  all  depends  on  the 
impact  of  the  initial  experience  which  set  it 
in  motion.  The  lasting  dynamic  empowering 
the  Christian  is  the  impulsion  that  arises  from 
experiencing  the  priceless  treasure  that  is 
found  in  Jesus  Christ.  Does  the  momentum 
of  our  experience  of  Christ  still  remain  as  a 
real  propulsive  force  in  our  lives?  What  does 
he  mean  to  us?  Think  of  the  five  great  things 
Christ  meant  to  John — the  way,  truth,  life, 
light,  and  grace.  What  is  our  personal  appre¬ 
ciation  of  these  things?  Out  of  our  own  expe¬ 
rience  does  Christ  loom  up  as  the  all-inclusive, 
indispensable  need  of  men? 


A  MATTER  OF  MORALE 


247 


Such  an  experience  is  motive  power.  The 
church  is  much  occupied  to-day,  and  right¬ 
fully,  with  programs.  But  programs  are  only 
tracks.  The  best-laid  tracks  will  never  move 
anything.  Tracks  are  only  a  mockery  without 
the  motive  power  of  an  experience  of  God 
which  will  move  the  world’s  loads. 

3.  Faith  in  the  Power  behind  us.  The 
spirited  morale  of  many  a  division  of  our  army 
in  action  in  France  was  built  out  of  the  knowl¬ 
edge  that  back  of  it  was  a  line  of  great  guns 
belching  forth  a  barrage ;  back  of  the  guns  was 
another  line  of  reserves;  back  of  the  reserves 
was  the  embattled  might  of  a  great  nation. 
Faith  shapes  courage  to  a  fighting  edge  in  the 
enterprise  of  the  Kingdom,  a  faith  that  behind 
our  best  strength  and  wisdom  are  the  inex¬ 
haustible  resources  of  God.  When  that  faith 
clouds  over,  our  personal  momentum  slackens. 
But  the  faith  that  thrusts  men  out  to  action 
is  not  a  vague  opinion  about  God  which  hovers 
around  the  edges  of  their  minds  like  a  New¬ 
foundland  fog.  It  is  a  coherent  and  vital  be¬ 
lief  in  the  presence  and  activity  of  God  in  his 
own  universe,  a  loving,  serving  God  who  is 
willing  for  the  world  the  goals  revealed  by 
Christ.  We  can  make  no  greater  contribution 


248 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE 


to  our  generation  than  to  carry  by  contagion 
that  faith  into  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men. 

A  survivor  of  Andersonville  prison  in  the 
Civil  War  has  told  of  the  efforts  of  the  men 
to  relieve  one  another’s  sufferings  which  went 
on  during  long  months,  efforts  deeply  appre¬ 
ciated,  but  of  limited  help.  But  one  night  a 
newly  captured  prisoner  moved  from  group 
to  group  with  the  news  that  Sherman  had 
taken  Atlanta  and  was  on  his  way  to  the  coast. 
That  news  was  an  electric  thrill  which  trans¬ 
formed  the  world  for  every  one  of  the  pris¬ 
oners.  Despair  and  even  malignant  sickness 
were  carried  away  by  the  shock  of  the  glad 
faith  that  an  outside  force  was  irresistibly 
moving  to  their  release. 

It  is  such  a  recreation  of  life  that  a  great 
faith  born  into  the  heart  brings  about.  To 
preserve  such  a  faith  in  our  own  hearts  and  to 
carry  it  to  a  baffled  world  is  our  supreme  serv¬ 
ice  to-day. 


Princeton 


leological  Seminary  Libraries 


012  0123 


2486 


